There is an unspoken assumption among the civilian population that strike teams like SWAT, SEALs, and so on tend to be quiet, almost somber on their way into a mission. They're fed movies and images and stories full of stoic, perfectly-chiseled men wearing high-grade equipment silently meditating on the mission to come, keenly aware not all of them may not make it back. The men themselves, when asked, will describe such things, detailing some of their small pre-combat rituals and routines that they use to focus and mentally prepare themselves in the time leading up to zero-hour.
It's all bullshit.
The armored trucks comprising the transport for WEASEL team seemed grim on the outside as they navigated the forest roads near the foot of Mt Rainier, with their Vantablack paint scheme and blacked-out windshields, but it was almost indistinguishable from a fraternity party bus on the inside, full of insecure men aged 18-35 making lewd jokes and engaging in the sort of horseplay that would seem homoerotic if not for the fact all men involved took great pains to make it clear they were virulently heterosexual. They had been briefed before leaving the facility, of course - they were aware that their targets were SRCC's Enemies #1 and #2, the failed HARP experiment known as J-4 D-3 and the only android to earn the "cyberpsycho" label, RENARD. They were also aware that no one who had been deployed against either of them survived, and often died brutally. They were different, of course - WEASEL team always got the job done. They knew beyond any shadow of doubt that they had what it took to storm the trailer the two clankers were using as a hideout, take them out, and be home in time to enjoy a celebratory fuck with their wives and girlfriends, "headache" or no headache.
The newest member of WEASEL team, Specialist Harry Palmer, had no such wife or girlfriend to go home to, but was still confident he'd get the kills. It was his first real mission, but he'd been using the VR simulators to play out scenarios against the two targets for a week straight, ever since that one Agent quit. He couldn't understand why that dude just left the SRCC after just... losing track of them. How hard could it be to follow a bitch with green wings and another one with three fox tails? And why would you just quit without trying to get back on the trail? Palmer decided the Agent just lost his nerve for some reason and looked down on him as weak, barely even a man.
His squad leader, Sergeant Jones, nudged him. "You alright there, Hairy Palms? You look a little lost."
Palmer looked over, shaking his head. "Not at all, Sarge, just ready to kill some metal bitches."
"It's your first mission, right?"
"Yeah."
Jones sat there for a moment, then stood up, gripping the handle over his head and smacking the ceiling of the truck with the butt of his rifle to get the troops' attention. "Hey, WEASELs, listen up!" After a few seconds, the soldiers quieted down enough to for Jones to continue. "So it's the kid's first outing with us, and we're going out hunting a couple clanker bitches. What do y'all think - should we let him get rid of his V-card before we send them to the junkyard?" A chorus of bawdy cheers rose up from the crowd of armed men, and Jones beamed like a proud dad at a football game. "Alright, lemme radio Sergeant Smith and let him know real quick." He put a finger to his ear. "Hey, Smith."
"What's up, Jones?"
"We're gonna let the kid fuck those robot chicks once we kill the fuck out of them - it's his first mission, I say we give him a proper WEASEL team welcome, yeah?"
"Fuck it, I'm down. How long do you think he'll last?"
"Twenty bucks says he goes twenty minutes - you know his dick's gotta be numb as shit."
"Fifty says he blows immediately. You saw the footage, they're way outta his league."
"Fifty it is, Smith, better have that cash ready for me tomorrow or you better get those lips nice and wet for me."
"Shut the fuck up, Jones."
"Whatever, love you too, pumpkin," Jones laughed as he cut comms with the other team. "Alright, kiddo, you got your chance to be the big swingin' dick hero tonight. Don't blow it."
"I won't Sarge, come on."
Jones opened his mouth to respond but the driver turned his head. "T-minus 2 Mikes, better get ready to roll."
"Alright, pussies and faggots," Jones shouted over the renewed din of the truck, "you heard the man. Lock and load!"
The truck suddenly changed atmosphere, as the troops quit their games and prepared their gear and equipment, making sure they were ready.
"Lights!" The driver turned the cabin lights off, allowing the troops' eyes to start adjusting - the organic ones, at least.
"NODs!" The soldiers started activating their night-vision equipment, whether they were goggles or ocular implants, and quiet, high-pitched whirring sounds filled the truck as it came to a stop.
"Action!" The men closest to the back opened the rear hatch of the truck wide open and got out, the remainder of the troops falling in behind. Ten men clambored out the back of each truck, ready to assault the trailer, Palmer among them.
The forest air was cooling off now that the sun was down, and the clear night sky and bright moon gave them excellent vision with the help of their equipment. Palmer pulled his skull-faced balaclava up over his face, leaving just his eyes exposed, and brought his Smith & Wesson M-29 OICW II to bear, checking that both magazines were properly seated and charging the weapon before falling into formation. The weapon was only recently put into mass production, a refinement of the venerable M4 with a couple of modern touch-ups - namely a 20mm semiautomatic snub-nose cannon loaded with airburst flak rounds, perfect for clearing out groups of protesters and airborne cyborgs alike, or so it went in the simulations. He hadn't tried it on either yet in real life.
"Alright fellas," Sergeant Smith, WEASEL 1-1, called out. "We got a bit of a hike ahead of us, the objective is about 350 meters northeast of our current position. Keep your heads on a swivel, and try not to trip on any tree roots." A small round of chuckles rose from the twenty-man strike team. "Alright, move out." With a wave of his arm to signal the advance, he took up his position at the head of the formation, the rest of WEASEL team falling in behind.
Despite the jovial atmosphere in the trucks, now that they were out in the woods the soldiers were quiet, keeping an eye on their surroundings. Night-vision equipment and rifle barrels swung left and right, ensuring nothing was attempting to flank the troops as above, the team's old MQ-9 Reaper drone, 'Betsy,' was reliably feeding information to the drivers in the truck, who were keeping an eye on their tablets and were under orders to pass along any anomalies in the feed. What WEASEL team didn't know was that 'Betsy' was currently in several pieces at the fringes of the forest, its turboprop engine blown apart by 9mm Gauss fire, wings severed a couple meters from the fuselage, and nose destroyed beyond the ability to salvage, along with all the sensors and comms equipment housed inside. A shrill, artificial howl filled the night sky as the perpetrator of this destruction took off.
"How do the skies look?" Smith radioed back to the trucks about ten minutes into their hike.
"Seems clear, over," came the reply, as bored eyes watched what they didn't yet realize was a looped feed of the last fifteen seconds of their drone's operational life before being engaged.
"Copy," Smith replied, "Let me know if anything changes. Out." The reply was cut off by static as Smith as he continued to lead the team deeper into the forest.
About twenty silent minutes later, the team made it to the clearing, eyes on the objective. The charred, abandoned trailer home sat in the moonlight as the fire team spread out, encircling the objective to make sure anyone or anything that was inside wouldn't be able to escape.
"At the objective," Smith radioed the trucks, "how's it looking out there?" When he was met with silence, he tried again. "WARDANCE, this is WEASEL 1-1, what's your status, over?" Still nothing. He scowled at his radio before bringing it back to his mouth. "Jones, you hear me?"
"Loud and clear," WEASEL 2-1 replied, "what's the move?"
"I think the trucks' radios are fucked," Smith grunted. "Send one of your guys to go check it out."
"Wilco. Hey Palms, go see what's going on with the trucks."
A grumble came over the comms. "What happened to the whole 'big dick hero' thing?"
"Then you better fuckin hurry," Jones snapped, "and try not to trip yourself with that big swingin' dick of yours if you want in on the action."
"Yes, Sarge," Palmer sighed, tightening up his gear and running around the clearing and on his way back to the truck. As he rattled away, the rest of the troops started to relax, waiting for some sort of update before making a move. The night air was cool and still, with barely even the occasional owls or other nighttime sounds around to break the silence.
Palmer's jog back to the trucks took about ten minutes. As they came into view, he went to a walk to catch his breath. As he continued to approach, he felt a pit in his stomach start to form. Maybe it was the eerie quiet in the air. Maybe it was the result of his being out of shape. Or maybe it was the holes in the windshield of one of the trucks and the steaming pile of gore on the other.
"Oh God." He fought his rising gorge as he approached the trucks. Trying to ignore the second truck, he approached the first. He was told that the trucks were entirely bulletproof right down to the reinforced glass and the unpoppable tires, and yet two perfect 9mm holes were punched through the narrow windshield. As he approached, he could see inside and immediately vomited onto his boots. The driver's body was blown apart from the chest up, the inside of the cabin painted red with blood and cluttered with fragments of shattered bones. The splatter was most extreme in the back wall between the cabin and the transport compartment, and in the middle of the dripping blood were two more holes, just below the neck. Whatever shot this poor bastard had more than enough power after blasting his lung cavity into chunky salsa to overpenetrate staight into the back of the truck. In an effort to continue his investigation, Palmer opened the truck door and immediately hopped backwards as the decapitated, mangled corpse fell out the door and onto the ground, leaking crimson as gravity pulled the pooling blood out from what was left of the driver into the thirsty earth. The smell that greeted Palmer - a mixture of copper, methane, and the indescribable stench of death - was enough to make him throw up again, this time his watery, orange puke splattering onto the bloody stump. After it cleared, he stood up and spat to clear his mouth, then continued to investigate the cabin. There was his head, on the passenger-side floorboard, spine and blood vessels and windpipe hanging out from the cranium as the force of whatever had killed the soldier had forcibly ripped the head up from the torso. The man's face was locked in a final expression of confusion and fear, eyebrows raised, eyes glazed over and unfocused in death. Palmer couldn't bring himself to lean into the cabin to close them. He turned away, closed his eyes, and sucked in a breath through bile-coated teeth. He knew he had to investigate the second truck, but didn't know if was ready to see it all up close.
If he hadn't already voided the contents of his stomach, he would have as he approached the other truck. As it was, he dry-heaved once as he approached and began to see in detail what the steaming pile arranged onto the hood of the vehicle was. It was the other driver... it had to be, his head was right there, spinal cord still attached and extending out from a clean incision through all the soft tissue. A green lipstick stain was placed on the forehead over the face, locked in an anguished expression. The body from the neck down was flayed, skin laid out over the hood like a blanket underneath the carcass. His limbs, amputated at the trunk, were arranged adjacent to the torso, arms towards the middle with hands against the windshield and legs along the outside with feet dangling over the edge of the hood as if it were a bed. The torso itself was split open down the middle, ribcage splayed open and viscera spilling out of the abdominal wall, giving it the appearance of a macabre omurice. It was down the middle of the gore that the spinal cord was laid, and the head was resting against the windshield, cradled in place by his hands. Blood still dripped down off the vehicle onto small puddles in the dirt, gleaming in the moonlight. The steam roiling off the exposed guts was beginning to dissipate as the carcass continued to cool off in the chilly night air. As Palmer staggered away, still nauseated by the sight, he noticed damage to the driver side door. The window was smashed, with blood caught against the shards of glass, and the hardened metal door itself had several punctures through it about the size of Palmer's thumb. Palmer was not a smart man, having only been given his high school diploma after signing on with the military at age 16, but some part of him began to think that something had stabbed through the door and into the driver sitting inside, then managed to smash the window and dragged the poor bastard out to meet a gruesome end.
Through the shellshock, Palmer began to realize Sergeant Jones was trying to reach him over comms.
"Palmer, come in. Where the fuck are you?" Jones growled into the radio. "Give me a status update."
"Sar, the - I - it - oh, God..." came the reply, followed by noise that sounded similar to crying.
"Palmer, come in! Your radio's acting up," Jones hissed. He was met with nothing but pulsing static and distorted wailing in reply. Growling, Jones reached out to Smith on comms. "There must be some sort of blackout going on near the trucks. Wanna wait for the kid to get back?'
"Negative," Smith replied with evident annoyance, "we've been waiting too long as it is. If we keep waiting we lose the element of surprise. We're moving now." He stood and adjusted his comms to transmit to the whole squad. "Alright, we're not getting anything from the trucks. We're going in on my count... three... two... one... N -"
His last word was interrupted by his torso spontaneously exploding as two ferro-uranium slugs slammed into his body at near-hypersonic speeds. About two seconds later, a high-pitched mechanical ping rang through the night air, mixing with the sudden din of shock and panic from the soldiers as they watched their team leader's chest and stomach blast apart, sending his arms and head flying as his legs, still connected to the stump of his waist, was knocked backwards into the dirt by the impact. As the carnage unfolded, a new sound began to fill the air - a shrill howl, growing louder until suddenly a black and neon-green blur streaked from the sky, slamming directly into Jones, whose own panicked yelling was cut short as a pair of iridescent green blades impaled him through his gut. The impact broke his spine instantly, so he was spared the sensation of feeling his body split apart violently as the source of the blur continued to fly through him, covering itself in his gore as his shattered body corkscrewed through the air, ricocheting off the trees before bouncing and rolling on the ground. The howl dissipated almost as quickly as it came, and a new voice filled the comms.
"Too slow, now your sergeants are dead." The voice was vaguely feminine, but husky and cruel, and the tone caustically singsongy.
"Shit, it's the target!" called out one of the soldiers, rifle whipping around wildly as he fired off at random, hoping to get lucky. The howling came in behind the source of the noise next, stopping as a pair of green-nailed arms reached around the man, slapping the rifle out of his hands before grabbing him by the belt.
"Good guess," J-4 D-3 cooed into his ear, still transmitting over open comms, "now here's your prize." It took off, the seam of the soldier's utility pants riding up with enough force to burst one of his testicles as it dragged him up through the forest canopy and into the night sky, biting into his exposed neck. Its sharpened teeth penetrated into the skin, puncturing the carotid artery, and blood began to spurt into the air as he gurgled, trying weakly to fight it off. After flying about half a kilometer into the air, it taunted, "Oh, did you want down?" before dropping him. He tried to scream but gagged on the blood leaking into his windpipe, horrifying his comrades as he fell back into the trees and landed on the ground with a sickening crunch next to a pair of his squadmates, his bones shattering from the impact and his torso bursting open, semi-liquified viscera spilling against his uniform tunic before leaking sloppily onto the forest floor. The men who witnessed this retched in near-unison, adding to the pile of filth as they wet themselves.
"Did you fellas get a good view of your buddy dying?" It asked, hovering about fifty feet off the ground behind them. When they turned to fire off their weapons, the cyborg was already gone, flight system shrieking as it launched into the air while the soldiers filled the previously-occupied air with bullets and airburst projectiles. The comms were filled with the sound of sadistic cackling as the unnatural screaming of its engines faded into the distance. "A minute and a half into the mission," the voice taunted, "and five of you are already dead." It tutted, which came through as small percussive bouts of static over the radios. "I knew you were bad but this almost isn't fun."
"The fuck you mean 'five'?"
"Which one are you... is that 'Suckerfish'?"
"That's Corporal Winchester to you, clanker," he growled in response. "And how the fuck do you know that?"
A cruel laugh rippled through the comms initially. "Please. If your comms discipline was any worse you'd be better off live-streaming your missions on Kick."
"Answer the question!" Winchester roared, firing his weapon wildly into the air.
"I'm out of range, dickface," the voice replied, unimpressed by the show of force. "But you never were good at aiming, were you? Maybe aside from aiming for higher positions by being a pathetic lapdog for your superiors."
A murmur rose from the troops, whom Winchester turned on. "Shut the fuck up!" He snarled, a hint of terror creeping into his voice, before he tried to collect himself. "You don't know shit, Juliet-Fo - AAHH, FUCK!" He violently pirouetted in place before landing on the ground, shredded stumps where his forearms once were. His weapon, broken by the force of the impact, clattered onto the ground as the same metallic ping echoed a couple seconds behind the ferro-uranium slugs. As he wailed, the half-dozen soldiers standing nearby looked to one another in confusion. "One of you fuckers, get over here and stop the bleeding!"
"Next one that moves dies," the voice hissed coldly. After a few seconds of stillness save for Winchester's continued writhing and moaning, it continued. "I know everything about you worth knowing, Corporal Michael Winchester," it began with a tone like spitting acid, "and that's not a lot. I know how much of a sycophant you are. I know your superiors and comrades fucking hate you. I've read the reports. I've heard the conversations. I've been stalking you - all of you, for the past month. Ever since we came across your Agent... Fulton, I think his name was. He was a good boy after we caught him skulking around and walked away. You bunch, on the other hand, decided to get all up in a tizzy and start playing BlOps 10 in real life." As it rambled, Winchester's movements had shifted to shivers as shock began to set in, and the screaming and moaning had given way to quiet, pathetic whimpering. "And now you're laying on the ground bleeding out, and none of your so-called 'battle buddies' are about to risk their lives to save you." Another cruel laugh, this one more of a giggle. "So much for camaraderie, huh?"
"Fuck... you... monster," Winchester gasped as he struggled to stay awake.
The air filled with that same howling as the source descended, landing on the ground immediately next to the dying soldier. Despite having seen images of the cyborg, seeing it in person was another matter entirely for the troops. Its pale, blood-stained skin and hair shone in the moonlight, green eyes overlaid with scarlet targeting reticles. Its feminine form was tightly hugged by a black bodysuit, and its winged flight system gleamed with a sharp black and silver. The gimbaled thrusters thrummed with a sickly green energy, matched by the nano-blade wing extensions and the mantis blades jutting wickedly out of its forearms. A pair of blade antennae, matching the wings' color and design, were mounted into the cyborg's temples above an augmented pair of similarly long, sharply-shaped ears. More observant eyes noticed the reinforced-polysteel ball joints that comprised the cyborg's prosthetic joints, as well as neurocircuit implants under its eyes and around where its "nipples" would be, were it not for the small barrels protruding from the bodysuit in their stead. Despite the obvious origins as a military-grade cyborg, multiple tattoos and piercings were visible, giving off a punkish energy not unlike a tank tagged with graffiti. It stepped on Winchester's heaving chest with a high-heeled combat boot, crouching down to look into the man's glazed eyes.
"Your government made this monster," J-4 D-3 snarled, sharpened teeth glinting from behind blood-stained lips. "The same one that you signed your pathetic little soul away to. We're the same... I'm just not lying to myself about it." She leaned, pressing the heel into the Winchester's sternum, which cracked under the quarter-ton cyborg's weight. He barely whimpered. "I'm doing the world and you a favor by killing you. Thank me in Hell." It twisted its foot, digging the heel deeper into the dying man's chest with a grisly series of snaps and crunches, before standing and putting all its weight onto its heel. The sternum finally gave way, and the foot sank into the collapsing chest cavity with a thick, wet crunch. His esophagus and aorta were crushed by the sudden trauma, and the blood which was squeezed out of the artery was too much for the heart to handle in its chambers, and suddenly burst like a water balloon. A spurt of blood landed on the cyborg's exposed stomach, which it then cleaned off with a finger before licking it.
"You sick cunt!" one of the other soldiers shouted in disgust, raising his weapon. The cyborg's jets fired and it took off just before the soldier opened fire, shredding the man behind where it had been standing not a second before with a pair of 20mm airburst shells. "What the fuck??"
Another soldier turned towards the killer with weapon raised. "You killed Temple, you team-killing fuckta-" he started, before his hips exploded as the now-familiar sounds of anti-personnel Gauss fire cracked through the air.
"Quoting an ancient machinima? Now of all times?" The cyborg groaned over open comms. "Not even I'm that cringey. Anyway, 'firing main cannons.'" The shot rang out again, blasting the head and upper half of what was left of the messily-bisected man apart. "And that's another... how many of you are dead now?" As it flew through the air, J-4 D-3 started counting aloud, "One two, three four five, six, seven... ah, eight."
"You're a bot and you can't fuckin count?" The team-killer radioed back boldly.
"Okay, firstly," it balked, "I'm a cyborg. Get it fucking right." Another ping broke the night air as the soldier's right leg was blown off below the knee, knocking him off-balance. "Secondly, ask your little friend Palms what happened to your drivers." Another ping, and the left leg was severed at the knee as the howling once again began to fill the air. "Thirdly" - it paused to slow its descent just enough to be able to crush the crippled man's head under its boots as it landed on the ground with a wet thud - "At least I never fragged a friendly." It spat on the broken corpse before taking off again. "Nine."
One of the soldiers broke from the group, fleeing into the woods as he struggled with his radio. "Palmer, where the fuck are you? We're getting torn apart out here!"
"They're dead..."
"What?"
"The drivers are fuckin dead, Rogers! That metal cunt blew one apart and turned the other into fuckin sushi!"
"So's Jones and Smith and half the fuckin team!" Rogers yelled hoarsely as he continued to run. "Don't regroup, man, you gotta get the fuck back to tow - oh God, it's flying towards me!" He screamed as the howling began to approach. He wheeled around, comms still open, and fired up at an angle. "Get the fuck away from me, bitch!" 5.56 and 20mm rounds arched up through the canopy into the sky above, the concealment of the trees not leaving the cyborg enough time to dodge as a rifle round clipped its left arm. The round opened a small tear into the cyborg's synthetic skin and impacted the metal underneath, damaging the skeleton and severing several of the myomer bundles in its deltoid.
J-4 D-3 grunted as its flight pattern was disrupted by the impact. "Finally, some prey with some fuckin teeth!" it exclaimed breathlessly. "I like you, Specialist Alexander Rogers. Shame your parents didn't."
"Fuck you!" He shouted back, firing off another burst into the night sky. Had the cyborg not adjusted its trajectory it would have caught the entire salvo in its torso, as it was the shots were several meters to its left.
"Your mom drank herself to death, then your dad couldn't handle the grief and started beating you until you shot him in the face," J-4 recited from memory. "Stories like yours make me sad, Rogers. Wanna know why?"
Rogers took the moment to check his magazine. Enough for one more burst. "I don't need your fuckin pity, clanker."
"There it is," the cyborg sighed as it began to slow down, descending through the canopy until it was flying through the forest, weaving between trees. "You could've been a good person, Rogers. Looked at the fucked-up situation that you were born into, did some soul-searching, realized how fuckin terrible society is, and tried to do something about it. Instead," it started before being interrupted by the soldier lining up his weapon and firing, at which point it threw itself to the right, executing a sharp snap roll and causing him to miss as the rifle clicked, the magazine out of ammo. "Instead you blame people who don't look or live like you, and made a living making their lives hell." It accelerated sharply, engines howling as it closed the distance between them all too soon, aimed its right arm blade, and crashed into Rogers, his rifle falling out of his hands as he was lifted off the ground, impaled. "And now you're going to die horribly, and no one will come to your funeral." It then climbed through the canopy and into the night sky, taking the left blade and gouged out one eye, then the other, as he screamed into the still-open comms. When he tried to punch at its back, it simply lopped off the offending arm. It then took the blade, resting it edge-up against his throat, then twisted the blade counter-clockwise, slicing through his lower jaw, then sliced through his cheeks, his jawbone bouncing off its forehead before plummeting down to the earth. His screaming became thin, almost hollow, as his voice was no longer being reverberated through his oral cavity. Finally, it took the blade and started hacking into the soldier's side not unlike a lumberjack felling a tree, chopping bits of gore and viscera away from him until he slid off the blade, the wind drag twisting his body the rest of the way in half as his intestines hung freely from their messily-hewn cavity. The cyborg stopped for a moment to watch as the dismembered carcass fell through the forest canopy and out of view. "Rot, filth," it growled, before accelerating back towards where the soldiers had been with engines shrieking.
"Good news, gentlemen," J-4 D-3 chimed over comms, "thanks to your dead buddy Roger's little stunt, one of you is probably running back to SeaPort as we speak, so now I have some actual hunting to do. Bad news? That means I don't have time to play with you anymore so I have to kill you quickly."
"We still outnumber you 11-to-1, you metal bitch," retorted one of the braver soldiers still standing.
The cyborg laughed. "Eleven of you aren't worth my left tit."
"Can't wait to cum all over it after we prove you wrong."
J-4 D-3 arched into the air before hovering about a kilometer above the ground, identifying the infantry's positions with its long-range sights. They had hunkered themselves down in the trailer but were visible from the air due to the roof having collapsed in. Tilting its head to the side, it scanned around for... there, not fifty meters to the west, an outcropping of stones in the woods that would have made much better cover. It smirked - some of them would have even seen the rocks when they were circling that trailer in the first place. It activated its half-mask, protecting its airways from the air as it started to accelerate, lazily circling east. Once it had reached the right intercept approach, it banked, burners vectoring to assist the sharp turn as it descended and accelerated, buzzing the treeline at 400, 500, 600 kilometers per hour.
"What's the matter, bot?" The same voice jeered. "You were talking so much shit up til a minute ago."
"Think we scared it?" Asked another voice.
"Course we did, it knows it can't take on all of us at once."
As the troops cheered, the now all-too familiar howling started to fill their ears, but they were too busy yelling and hyping one another up to notice. Before they realized it, the head of the soldier that had just been goading the cyborg and the chest cavity of another blew apart within half a second of each other, two individual Gauss shots heralding the cyborg's arrival as it crashed down through the hole in the ceiling, crushing a third soldier with a grisly crunch as his bones shattered and internal organs liquified. Green blades flashed in the moonlight, impaling a fourth soldier and bisecting a fifth through the midsection. Before the torso hit the floor, it turned around, using the impaled soldier's body as a shield as some of the other soldiers opened fire, then kicked on its jets and blasted forward, slamming into the crowd of soldiers and ripping its blade free. Again the Gauss sang its baleful song and a sixth soldier was liquified from the legs up at point-blank range, the seventh so close behind the overpenetrating slugs also ripped through his chest cavity, collapsing both of his lungs as he gasped and fell, starting to suffocate. The eighth was decapitated as one blade led the cyborg's spin, the ninth was stabbed under the chin so thoroughly the blade burst through the top of his skull, and the tenth tried to close in to avoid the blades, only for the green carbon-fiber fingernails to pierce through the side of the neck as the cyborg clenched its fist around the soldier's larynx, ripping it free as he sank to the ground gurgling as he drowned in the blood spilled from his jugular and carotid. Dropping the ruined windpipe, it brought the lodged skull around, bringing its foot up to kick the corpse off, then walked up to the still-gasping man, gently kicking him so he laid on his back, then proceeded to step on his throat until the windpipe, then spine cracked and collapsed under its boot. When one of the corpses moved in the corner of its vision, it wheeled around on that same boot, effectively decapitating the body as it fired its guns at the eleventh, who had been playing dead under the corpse of the decapitated soldier, rupturing both men like bloated roadkill. All of this occurred within six seconds.
"Pathetic," the cyborg spat, nudging one of the piles of steaming gore with its foot. It fired its flight system and took off, the shrill howl of its engines now the only sound in the vicinity of the trailer until it faded into the distance.
Palmer heard all of this, of course. He heard the swearing, the yelling, the jeering, and the whirlwind of death that had ensued since Rogers had ordered him to try to get back to town. The distortion of the comms systems twisted the sounds into something out of a hellish nightmare, terrifying and enraging the young soldier at the same time. If only he'd been there, he thought. He could've helped turn the tide and saved the day. Then they'd respect him... the man, no, the hero who took down the 'Harpy.' That'd get him laid for sure.
"Oh Paaaalmerrrrrr." That hateful cyborg's voice took on a singsongy, taunting tone as it called out to him over comms.
"Fuck you," he warbled as bravely as he could muster, trying to not sound as out of breath as he was from running down the dirt maintenance road the trucks had taken not fifteen minutes before.
"You'd like that, I'm sure."
A small thrill hit Palmer's gut as he remembered the images of the cyborg from the briefing. "You're not even hot," he lied.
"Oh come now," the voice chided, "you don't have to pretend. No one else is around anymore. Now it's just you... and me." As the cyborg's voice changed tone, adopting a slower and more sensual drawl. Just talk a little more, kid, it thought, I almost have you.
"Why would I wanna fuck a clanker bitch like you?" Palmer half-heartedly spat back.
J-4 D-3 smiled maliciously as its comms array geolocated the soldier's radio. "Because, Harry," it cooed, "I've heard the jokes. I've seen the text messages, the group chats, the X tweets spreading my nudes all around..."
"I don't know what you're talking about," he lied again, feeling a tingle between his legs as he thought about the images he'd seen of the cyborg outside of the briefing.
"Your handle is SpecialHarryCock2k5," the voice deadpanned. "You changed it after your promotion six months ago. You really seem to like the one I took in the biotech lab, you've retweeted it seven times."
Hearing his handle repeated back to him caused him to stop jogging dead in his tracks. "What the fuck?" he muttered. "How the fuck do you know that?" The faintest sound of an eerie, artificial shrieking reached the edges of Palmer's hearing.
"Because, Harry," it replied as it started to circle the soldier's location from 10,000 feet in the air, "I was designed to be a surveillance drone as well as a hunter-killer. That's how the government made me. Besides," it added with a cruel giggle, "unlike you, I actually have friends. Skilled ones, too."
"I have friends!"
"No you don't," it retorted. "You're a loser. A shut-in who talks to LLMs that you dress up as hot anime girls and make fawn over you because you can't talk to an actual woman to save your life."
"I talk to girls all the time," Palmer protested.
"Your mother doesn't count. She's a gorgeous woman, by the way."
Palmer stopped dead in his tracks again. "The fuck is that supposed to mean?"
"I dunno, Mister 'brown-hair anime Pixar mommy milf big tits,' you tell me."
He looked up in the air, trying to spot the cyborg. "You looked at my search history?"
"Duh," it replied, "just because you were on your phone doesn't mean it wasn't visible on the SRCC's Internet." As Palmer started to move again, the cyborg started to lazily fly in a downward spiral.
"Fuckin' how long have you been snooping on us, bitch?" Palmer shouted, his voice echoing into the night. He brought his rifle up, sweeping the night sky for any sign of his flying enemy while turning around to walk in the same direction backwards. When swinging his rifle up, he tripped over a root and fell backwards. His trigger finger twitched in reaction, and he unleashed a burst of rifle fire.
"Careful there, soldier," the cyborg cautioned wryly, "wouldn't wanna shoot yourself out here in the middle of the woods."
"Shut the fuck up, clanker," Palmer spat, his face reddening.
"Awww, is the little soldier boy embarrassed?" J-4 D-3 decided to risk a low-level flyover as it condescendingly addressed the soldier as he stood upright.
From the ground, Palmer panicked for a moment when he heard the howling closing in, then saw the shape of dagger-like wings overhead, blocking out starts as it flew past. "I SAID SHUT UP!" he roared, firing off more of his magazine and popping off three airburst shells as well, more than enough to cripple the flying cyborg. His aim went wild, however, and the rounds arced harmlessly behind and around the shadow overhead. As it accelerated with howling engines, he fired off another burst, this time managing to clip its right foot with shrapnel from an airburst shell. The scraps of metal and ball-bearings shredded the outer sole of its boot and became lodged inside it, but otherwise the cyborg seemed uneffective. As it flew away, Palmer attempted to fire again but was greeted with the sound of clicking as his magazines ran dry. "Fuck," he muttered.
"Uh oh," chided cyborg's voice over comms, "it looks like someone ran out of ammo."
"Doesn't matter," the young man boasted, tossing the empty weapon away, "I can still take you on."
J-4 D-3's eyebrows raised as it heard this over comms. "Really? You think you can succeed where all the rest of your team failed?"
"Come down here and fight like a man and I'll prove it," Palmer retorted, "rather than doing all that flying around pussy shit."
This made the cyborg laugh. "I'm not a man, I'm a cyborg, a clanker. Remember?"
"I read enough of the file to know you were born a man."
The cyborg halted its flight and hovered in midair about two hundred feet off the ground, eyes narrowed. "What's your point?" The tone was suddenly bitter, cold, all the humor in it gone.
"Struck a nerve, didn't I?" Palmer crowed, now laughing at the change in his enemy's voice. "Yeah, I know you used to be a man. Then you got sick and let the government turn you into a clanker - which, you know, whatever, I know some clankers. But then you ran away and turned yourself into a faggot. You're too augmented to be a man but you'll never be a fuckin woman."
The cyborg planted its tongue into its cheek for a moment, then turned around, retracted its blades back into its forearms, and started flying towards the soldier at high speed. "You know, I was already gonna enjoy torturing you because you're a shitty soldier, a pathetic loner incel, and an unaug supremacist, but..." Upon arriving, it adjusted its thrusters, launching itself straight downward with enough force that it landed with a dense thud into the rocky road, kicking up a small cloud of pale, shimmering limestone that dissipated around its ankles as it stood back upright after absorbing the shock of the landing. "You've officially gotten under my skin." Its half-mask now gone, the dried blood covering its face cracked as it continued to speak, then started to fall off in small flakes as it smiled wickedly, exposing a row of sharpened teeth. "So now I'm really gonna take my sweet time with you."
Palmer had heard the howling engine, but was not expecting the cyborg to slam into the ground directly in front of him, yelping as it landed. When it smiled and started to walk towards him, he initially flinched backwards, but he noticed the cyborg was smaller than him; it couldn't have been taller than five-foot-eight and was surprisingly skinny for a military cyborg. He was well over six-foot tall and hit the gym daily. Plus it was dressed slutty, fake tits practically hanging out of its bodysuit. Plus it had long nails - it clearly couldn't punch him. He could take this bitch down, he decided. Beat it, fuck it like the little fag it is, and then go back to town and brag about how he beat the freak that had been a thorn in the government's side for years, SRCC's Enemy Number One. Invigorated, he launched himself forward with a roar, bringing his right fist up for a fight-ending haymaker - and had his fist stopped in place by its hand, which felt surprisingly hard for such a frail-looking cyborg. It started to squeeze its nails into his hand like a ripe grapefruit.
"A right hook?" The cyborg asked, bored tone in its voice and an expression to match. "Of course you'd be this predictable." All the while it continued to squeeze, blood beginning to leak from the deepening wounds in Palmer's fist from its nails. Palmer kept a brave face, but was beginning to shift somewhat under the pressure. "Go ahead and try again before I break your hand."
With a roar, he went to punch the cyborg's gut, then grunting in pain when his left knuckles collided into its stomach, which for a moment almost sounded like he'd punched a window. All the while, the squeezing continued unabated. He shook his left hand out, then tried to grab the cyborg's wrist to try and pull his right hand free. It apathetically glanced at his hand, then reached up to grip his wrist with her own hand, twisting it free and holding it to the side. He pulling himself towards the cyborg to try and headbutt it, but his left arm was twisted at an awkward angle by the cyborg, and he yelped as he felt his elbow crack, hyperextended to the point of fracture. Just seconds after, his right pinky's knucklebones started to collapse under the pressure of the fist enclosed around it, snapping with a wet pop. Shortly after that, the knuckles in his other fingers also gave way, one after another over a period of about fifteen seconds. With each bone that broke, he began to yell out louder and louder, instinctively crouching in a futile attempt to reduce the pain. The cyborg started to turn its wrist, causing his arm to twist clockwise as bones continued to snap and crackle and pop under its grip and the nails burrowed deeper into his skin, beginning to penetrate through the dermis and started to dig into the soft tissue. He started to twist at the wrist, then the elbow, then the shoulder, trying to compensate for the manipulation of his joints.
"Fuck, you can let go now," Palmer howled in agony, "you've already fuckin broke it!"
J-4 D-3 tilted its head to the side, activating its X-ray vision and scanning his hand. "Looks like I've only broken nine of your bones so far..."
"The fuck do you mean 'so far' - AAHHH FUCK!" His question was cut short as the cyborg reached with the other hand, prying his thumb away from the reminder of his fist and systematically began to squeeze and twist each individual phalange until it audibly popped and cracked. After the thumb was rendered entirely shattered, it shifted its grip with its other hand and proceeded to work its way down each finger in a similar fashion.
"I told you," it said with a deceptive calm in between the snaps of breaking bone and echoing wails of pain, "I'm gonna take my time. That means breaking every... single... bone in your fucking hands. The same hands you use to jerk off, the same hands you used to fail miserably at shooting me, the same hands I'm sure you were hoping to use to pin me down while you raped me."
The soldier breathed in, his voice ragged from his screams. "How did you know -"
The cyborg cut off his question by gripping his forearm and twisting his hand unnaturally, fracturing the carpal bones in his wrist. "Because you pathetic fucking fascists are all the same! Do you know how many of you worthless fucks I killed turned out to be abusers or rapists or fuckin pedophiles?" It started cranking his hand back and forth, accentuating its points with the sound of bones grinding against themselves until they turned to dust. "EVERY! SINGLE! ONE OF YOU!" It let go of the shattered hand and kicked the crying soldier in the chest, sending him reeling backwards. As soon as he landed on his ass it was on him again, stomping on the broken right hand and grabbing his still-infact left hand to repeat the process. "You're worse than fuckin animals - in theory you should fucking know better!" Its voice took on a frenzied edge as it continued its rant, "But no no no, you're too busy trying to show off what a fucking man you are, how many bitches you fuck, how many augs or brown people or homeless people or queers or pets you can kill and get away with, all while demanding the public bend over backwards to kiss your hairy unwashed asses!" It gripped his hand with its own, then took its other hand and clapped it against the back of his, crushing it between its palms to the sound of multiple bones cracking. "I'm so fuckin sick of it I could puke!" It gripped his left hand, cranking it almost fully around to the sounds of crackling, shattered bones.
Palmer started trying to speak, but was greeted with a swift kick to the ribs, a couple of them cracking under the force of the cyborg's metal shin.
"You've lost the right to speak, filth." J-4 D-3 growled through gritted teeth. "Actually..." It sat on Palmer's chest, pinning him in place, then grabbed his neck with its left hand, holding his head in place.
Despite himself, Palmer grinned. "I knew you were into the kinky shit."
The cyborg snarled, then punched him in the jaw with as much force as its cybernetic joints could muster, shattering his mandible. His yelp of pain turned into an indecipherable gargle as dislodged teeth fell out of pulverized gums, blood oozing down his throat. "You have no fuckin idea, boy." It lifted its right arm to an upright angle, the armor bracer over the outside of its forearm opening up to reveal one of its blades, which sprang out of its fixture with a sinister click before the bracer closed back up and locked the mechanism in place. "You ever heard of CBT?"
If possible, the young man went even more pale. "No, don't," he tried to plea, but with his jaw broken all he could manage was a pathetic gurgling.
"I'll take that as a yes," the cyborg observed before standing to turn around. It hooked the blade under the soldier's uniform trousers, then brought the blade up, slicing effortlessly through the cotton-weave pants and the woven canvas belt. Between terror and sudden exposure of his sweating lower body to the cold night air, Palmer's boxers suddenly started to become soaked with urine. "Pissing yourself isn't gonna save you from me," J-4 D-3 muttered cruelly, again taking the blade and hooking it under the seam of his underwear, carefully threading it through until the top of the blade peeked out from under the leg opening. It then twisted and pulled, slicing the boxers and exposing the man's genitals. His pubic hair was entirely unkempt and matted with caked-over filth, pale yellow smegma collecting around the glans from under the foreskin. His flaccid shaft and scrotum were starting to shrivel due to the sudden cold, the former shrinking down to the size of the cyborg's thumb knuckle. The cyborg fished the glans out from the soldier's bush, pulling it upright as it held it between its sharp carbon-fiber nails like a cigarette. "You know, I used to have one of these, but I took much better care of mine. Fuckin government cut it off anyway," the cyborg mused with a tone loaded with malicious intent. "I was circumcised, though... and you probably should be too, based on how filthy this is." It looked back, brandishing its blade with a wicked grin. "Let's fix that." It pulled his penis taut as it reflexively started to become erect due to the unusual sensations, then took its blade to the region immediately underneath the glans, cutting into the foreskin. Palmer, his voice already shot, groaned and gurgled in pain as the blade sliced into his member, and the cyborg began twisting his penis around, slicing it along the blade. "Oops," it muttered, then sliced through the entirety of the shaft, amputating the glans. It held it up to a horrified Palmer, whose eyes were wide as he started to go into shock. "You didn't need this, did you?" It asked with a sadistic smirk, before tossing the severed flesh away. It landed on his chest with a barely-audible plop. "Let's see, what next..." it muttered as Palmer continued to groan behind it. "Oh, heck, why not? Hey, Palmer, you ever stab a grape with a fork?" Before he could attempt to answer, she pierced one of his testicles with one of its weaponized fingernails. A shrill, gurgling scream met the action, followed by another when J-4 D-3 did the same to his other testicle. "These ones didn't slip out from under my nail - that's good," it commented dryly, looking at the bloody fingernails. "It's so annoying when you go to stab one and they just slip out of the way, you know?" It stood up, stepping so it was no longer straddling the soldier. "Anyway, good luck losing your virginity now, champ." Its voice was like a flaying knife, thin and wickedly sharp. "No hands to choke your first, no cock to rape her with... your life's basically over now, huh?"
A weak, burbling sob was all Palmer could respond with.
J-4 D-3 clicked its tongue chidingly. "Harry, Harry, Harry... what did I tell you about your right to speak? Looks like you need a gag to help you shut up." It wiped its hand off on the tattered canvas of Palmer's ruined pants leg, then reached for his ruined manhood. "And I know just the thing." Palmer did his best to protest but could only speak in panicked, splashy grunts as the cyborg grasped the scrotum, pulling it taut away from his trunk, then shifted to angle its blade to rest against where the skin met, then started to slowly slice his genitals off. The soldier's blood fonted slightly out of his mouth as he screamed, then started gagging and coughing on his blood. "Oh hush, they did this to me a few years ago," the cyborg scolded the screaming soldier, "you'll be fine." His hips bucked slightly against the cyborg, causing her blade to slip, stabbing him in the inner thigh. "Now look!" the cyborg sighed in mock exasperation. "I wasn't even intending to cut you there, you did that one yourself. Now fuckin hold still!" It pulled the half-amputated scrotum tighter, causing the solder under her to scream again and stiffen in agony as she continued to pull and cut through the remainder of the skin until it finally pulled free, ripping of the suprapubic skin up along with it in a strange mimickry of scalping. It then retracted its arm blade, which softly whirred and clicked back into its home within the prosthetic forearm. "There," the cyborg proclaimed with satisfaction, "now it's not useless anymore." It spun around, turning to face the soldier's upper half with severed genitals in hand. "Now say 'aaah.'"
Palmer shook his head, causing bloody saliva to dribble out of his ruined mouth down his cheeks, but the cyborg simply grabbed the flap of skin that had once held his chin with its free hand, pried his mouth open, and stuffed the genitals inside, causing him to gag, then attempt to vomit, only for small dribbles of watery puke to squirt out of the corners of his lips and his nostrils as he choked on it.
"That ought to keep you quiet," J-4 D-3 cooed, reaching down to gently wipe the puke away from around his mouth. It initially went to wipe the filth off on her leg, but then shook its head and wiped it into his eye, which started to water as the corrosive juices from his stomach was rubbed into his cornea. It stood upright, stepping over him and took a couple steps back to assess its handiwork, hands on hips and head tilted to one side. "Y'know, Harry," it sighed, shaking its head. "You really might be the most pathetic little fuck I've ever played with." Palmer turned his head to try and look at the cyborg, coughing out a small sputter of blood, spit, and puke around his improvised gag. "I really mean it. Most the other ones I do this with try to fight back - either they throw their body around and struggle against me or try to either bargain for their pathetic lives or say something to try and hurt my feelings, or at least make me fucking think." It shrugged. "It never works, but I appreciate the fight they have. It makes the kill feel... I dunno, worth it?" It stepped back forward, crouching down next to Palmer's head. It reached its hand out, causing him to flinch for a moment before it started gently caressing his filthy cheek and stroking his sweaty, dirty hair. "Not you, though. You shouted some slogans at me, pissed me off, and then did nothing but whine and bitch and piss at me. You're just as worthless in death as you were in life, and I just want you to know that." It slapped his cheek, first softly, almost playfully, then hard, the stinging sound echoing a short distance as a hand-shaped welt began to form. He kept looking away, to which she snarled, "Fuckin look at me." It grabbed his ruined chin in one hand, pinching his lips together and forcing him to look at her. "If hell existed, I'd find your sorry soul and pull you from the flames just so you could be the only person to actually attend your closed-casket funeral." Without warning, it slid its palm up the soldier's face until the heel of its hand rested against his nose, then took her index and little fingers and plunged the nails into his eyes, which split and burst from the sudden trauma like rotten fruit. Vitreous fluid and blood spurt out of the wounds as the uveas prolapsed around the cyborg's green nails, then were split open as its fingers forced their ways through the corneas and deeper into the vitreous body. It then curled its fingers, gouging the nails into the bottom of the eye and pulled them out, ripping the eyes out of their sockets while they split open like egg yolks. "I'm going to be the last fucking thing you see and hear in this world, just like your filthy ballsack gag is going to be the last thing you smell and taste." It then took its hands, cradled the blinded man's head, and shoved its middle fingers as deep into his ear canals as they could go. The nails sliced through the delicate, cerumen-coated skin of his ear until their sharpened ends pierced through his eardrum, the last thing he heard the popping of his eardrums and crushed inner ear bones. It then pulled both fingers free, wiping the blood and earwax off on the soldier's bloodied tunic.
It stood, watching over the mangled man for a moment as it scanned his body for signs of life. It found them, and scowled. "Shattered hands, shattered jaw, cock and balls cut off, blinded, deafened, and still fucking alive," it muttered to the air. "It'd be impressive if this little shit wasn't so fucking annoying." It shook its head, bringing its blade back out of its arm. "Whatever. I've had my fun." It strode towards Palmer's exposed waist, nudging his legs apart with its foot, then crouched down. Next, it grabbed one of his legs, holding it away and pushing it up towards his torso, exposing the still-bleeding wound where his penis once was and his blood-caked anus. It then thrust the blade at him, stabbing him through the anus and angling its arm to follow through the strike until the end of the blade burst through his abdomen, under the ribs. It then stood, hooking the body against the blade and, with a violent jerking motion, ripped the blade through the bottom half of his torso until it cut through the ligaments of his pelvis with a sickening sound. It then threw the dangling leg aside, causing the half-bisected carcass to flop and twist around itself unnaturally as blood and viscera spilled out the gaping opening onto the dirt ground, steaming in the moonlight. One more scan revealed negative life signs. It spat on the shredded corpse, then ripped the radio free from the blood-soaked uniform shirt and cleared its throat.
"Command, WEASEL 2-10," it called into the radio, attempting its best impression of the dead soldier at its feet. "Come in command, please!"
"Palmer? Is that you?" A voice responded.
A sardonic grin split the cyborg's bloodied face. "Palmer's dead," it said in its own voice, tainted with a bloodthirsty, purring tone. "They're all. Dead. They died horribly and pathetically at my talons. Watch the skies... I'm coming for you next." It threw aside the radio, then kicked on its howling engines and took off into the night sky. As the unnatural shrieking faded into the dark, twenty-two mangled piles of human remains, all that remained of Task Force WEASEL, grew cold in the night sky as what little wildlife remained at the foot of Mount Rainier started to draw near.