Introduction

Hello and welcome to my next story. This story takes place on planet Venus. It will be written from the first person, i.e. main character will be explaining the story. It contains a mixture of true and made up scientific facts and therefore can be considered as a fantasy and also contains a lot of action. Also I apologise for so much science in the first chapter and for half the chapters being so short. Nevertheless hope you enjoy reading this story!

VENUS side story

This is a side-story to a story of mine called V.E.N.U.S. So for more explanation on life on Venus is in there.
By the way, the days and the years in this story are by Earth time, not by Venus’ as a year on Venus is shorter than that on Earth and the day is much longer.

17th of January, year 2108, location – Dome #25, Venus
Welcome to my diary. My name is Seth. I’ve decided to record all my thoughts and adventures here in case we won’t make it. It’s been almost a year now since human race arrived at planet Venus. Unfortunately the ship that I was in crash landed and so I was in a coma for all this time. The doctors say that I am lucky to be alive. The reason we moved planets is because Earth was destroyed by an asteroid, but luckily we fitted all of humanity and useful supplies on our spaceships. We have many inventions to counter Venus’ vile conditions, in particular a metal called Crufax that has high melting point and resistant to extremely high pressure.
Yesterday I joined a police force that operates here on Venus. It’s true that after a major disaster, criminal activity is pretty likely to happen. Everyone only cares about themselves, while we try to bring order. Our force is called V.E.N.U.S. which stands for Vast Elimination of Negotiations Universal Security. I used to be a police officer back on Earth and so have some experience in this area.
The humans are gradually adapting. We’ve built a few domes out of Crufax and have suits made of it. Even though we don’t have too many suits yet so do not tend to come outside the domes as often. In a few years’ time we should turn this planet in a habitable place. We just need time.

22nd of January, year 2108, location – Dome #25, Venus
The last few days went well for me. I am still recovering from the trauma of crash landing and gradually regaining some of the memory back. Finally my team got a serious task today. Tomorrow we’ll be shipped off to Dome 13, as there’s been an accident there. That’ll be my first proper assignment here and I am very looking forward to it. I made some friends on my team. Their names are Joe, Max and Greg.
Joe is a pretty laid back dude and likes to joke a lot. Some of his jokes I don’t get. Max is a rather opposite of Joe, he tends to be serious most of the time and doesn’t smile much to be honest. Greg is clever one in our group, he tends to work out difficult problems in seconds. Well as I said already, I’m looking forward to the assignment tomorrow and hope that it goes well. I’ll keep on recording my thoughts on here as often as I can.

23rd of January, year 2108, location – Dome #13, Venus
So we’ve finally arrived to Dome #13 after 1 hour of mission briefing and preparation, and 2 hours of flight. This half of the dome that we are in has been evacuated, so there’s pretty much not a single soul here, just 10 V.E.N.U.S. members checking the place out. I tended to mostly stick with my friends as I trusted them. I remember how frustrated they were getting as the place was a mess and also smelled badly. Max was so bored that he was gonna shoot at the wall. Joe kept on winding him up with his silly jokes, Greg kept on wandering off into his thoughts, so I pretty much was the only one following the rules.
Right now we’re having a little break but we’ll continue checking out the place. Afterall one dome is huge and therefore it will take us days to look through it all.

25th of January, year 2108, location – Dome #13, Venus
It’s been 2 and a half days now and still no clues. This mission is starting to get very boring now. Our chief thought of perhaps splitting up, because this way we’ll look through this half of the Dome much quicker. Max has officially gone insane. He punched Joe today for making a joke about his girlfriend and overall has been very impatient with the mission. I don’t blame him. I feel like going ballistic too, but I don’t want to be hated by my team.
Tomorrow, we’ll be splitting up. Me, my mates and also one more guy named Fred will be checking out the lower levels, while the rest of the guys will be checking higher levels. I really do hope that we will be back to our home Dome soon, but my instincts are telling me otherwise. Something fishy is going on here and I don’t like it. I smell conspiracy.

27th of January, year 2108, location – Dome #13, Venus
Oh my God, I feel like I’m going to have a nervous breakdown now. Yesterday everything was going OK, but today we stumbled onto a dark room and while travelling through it, something took away Max and Fred. The rest of us sprinted through the remainder of the room like 3 scared-to-death mice. We still haven’t found Max and Fred. I hope they’re still alive. We cannot afford casualties at this time. Even Joe has been quiet and hasn’t made any jokes for the whole day. We tried to report to our chief about the situation, but the signal is really bad down here and something seems to be disrupting it. Maybe there is some kind of electromagnetic field in this area. Well there is nothing else we can do except for carrying on with our mission. Greg found a blood trail leading underground a few minutes ago, but none of us has been brave enough to go down there yet. Maybe we’ll go down there tomorrow and see whose blood that is. I feel like the answer to all our questions is down there.

28th of January, year 2108, location – Under Dome #13, Venus
Ok so today me and the rest of my friends decided to be brave and went through that door. We’re currently underground having a little rest. We’ve been seriously spooked out today when we saw a huge mouth and an eye inside it come out from the ground. It was really dark so maybe we were hallucinating, but that thing looked very real. We all are very scared. I don’t know how long we will survive before losing our mind.
Greg vomited twice today. I think he’s allergic to the smell here. The smell is quite peculiar, I am still trying to find words to describe it.
I don’t wish to continue going any more today, neither do my teammates, but we still have not found Max and Fred, so we can’t procrastinate. I hope we will be men enough to continue tomorrow.

29th of January, year 2108, location – Under Dome #13, Venus
It’s been another day in hell. We’ve almost ran out of our food supplies. I think they’ll last us for 2 more days. We decided to screw the mission and to go back. If Max and Fred are here somewhere then they’re likely to be dead already. I think they would’ve died of dehydration already. I worked as a policeman for almost 9 years back on Earth and never have I seen a teammate die in combat. What kind of hell is this planet?!
So far we didn’t see any life forms in here or anything that could’ve taken Max and Fred away a few days ago, just blood stains everywhere. Some kind of slaughter definitely happened here. I think these were some kind of labs doing illegal research. I would really like to know what’s going on but I don’t think any of us has a nerve to continue this mission, so tomorrow we’ll be heading back up.

2nd of February, year 2108, location – Under Dome #13, Venus
How glad am I to find my diary again! I’ve just had the worst week of my life! Joe, Greg and I were heading back when we were attacked. I don’t know what they were, but they are nothing I’ve seen before. They were some hideous beings as if sent from hell. There were ones with a mouth instead of a face, then there were muscly ones with a huge jagged tongue and there were also a few flying ones with massive teeth and a sting. Both Joe and Greg died the most awful death I’ve ever seen in my life. I don’t even want to write about it. It gives me death chills. That’s when I lost this diary. I kept on running as fast as I could until I plunged into a massive hole in the floor. I lost my consciousness and woke up only a few hours ago. It took a while to climb out of there. It was so dark and smelly there that I thought I was in my grave already. I am not sure what are my chances of getting out of here alive, but as long as I have ammo in my V-blast handgun I should make it.

4th of February, year 2108, location – Somewhere near Dome #13, Venus
I am currently breathing in my last breaths of air. I don’t think I’ll be able to write in this diary tomorrow. I’ll try to explain what happened to me in the past 2 days as briefly as possible.
To begin with I lost my way, I am not sure what happened to the place, but I never found my way out of the underground. Instead I kept on crawling through a very long tunnel. It took me a few hours! I was attacked by some creatures on the other side. I shot a few down, but got severely injured. I also saw Max’s and Fred’s dead bodies. Their limbs were scattered all over the place and their entrails were smudged on the walls. I crawled my way here. I don’t know what is this place, but it is by far the cleanest and blood-free place I’ve seen in days. There is actually a small computer here and it is fully functional. I read some nasty things here and a lot of this began making sense. I even found out that I have a wife and a 14 year old son here on Venus. Why didn’t anybody tell me about them?! But most importantly: Why couldn’t I remember them?!
I really wish I could make it back and to see my family but it looks like I… o…

Chapter 21 – Divulgement

I opened my eyes for a few split seconds and could see bravo team. Looks like some of them made it here.
- “Hey, Agent Rocker is still alive. We need a medic!” one of them shouted
I kept on losing my consciousness and regaining it back every few minutes until I finally woke up in a hospital bed. Chloe was there beside me.
- “Welcome back!” She said when she saw that I gained my consciousness back.
- “Huh? God! What an adventure.” I said quietly.
- “I am glad that you made it. When you didn’t return home yesterday I began getting worried.” Chloe was saying, “So I called your boss and he explained the situation to me. I was scared to lose you.”
- “How long have I been there?” I wondered.
- “Almost two days.” Chloe replied.
I didn’t realise how long I’ve been there. It seemed much less than that. Some flashbacks were still popping up in my head. I didn’t really enjoy them as they were not nice experiences. At this moment the door to the room opened and David came in.
- “Jim, glad to know that you made it.” David began and sat down next to my hospital bed too.
- “David, there’s so much to talk about. I can’t believe V.E.N.U.S. force was behind all this.” I said.
- “We aren’t.” David justified, “We just happened to have some rebels.”
- “Well Chuck told me about a guy named Bakk who used to be a commander for V.E.N.U.S. and he came up with a project called ‘The Great Survivor’ in order to make humans immune to this planet’s atmosphere. This is madness, isn’t it?”
David’s eyes widened. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing and after a few seconds spoke:
- “All right, this is making more sense than I thought.”
- “Why?” I asked.
- “It was me who came up with project ‘The Great Survivor’. I came up with that on the first place, but I didn’t want to risk putting it to use as I knew it would create many problems. Bakk was my elder brother. It sounds like he stole my idea and decided to actually work on it. I can’t believe all this time he kept that project hidden from me. May he rest in peace.”
- “What?!” I couldn’t believe it, “You? You came up with ‘The Great Survivor’? And Bakk is your brother?”
Chloe was getting very lost in mine and David’s conversation. David couldn’t believe any of it either. It was just too big of a surprise for us all.
- “All right then Jim, get better soon.” David said and began leaving.
- “Hey, what happened to the secret lab?” I asked out of curiosity.
- “We’re still collecting evidence there, but you turned out to be the best evidence we have.” David explained.
- “What about the creatures?” I wondered.
- “Extinct, as far as I know.” David said.
- “Then this is over.” I said.
- “Anyways, looking forward to seeing you back at work, Jim. You’ve proven yourself to be a great hero and are now the best current V.E.N.U.S. member. Well done!”
With these words David left the room. Chloe then looked at me and said sweetly:
- “You see?! I told you that you are the best.”
- “I just did what I thought would be best for humanity.” I said.
- “Ah I love you.” Chloe said and kissed me.

* * *

A couple of days later I recovered completely and could go back to work. I was glad that I stopped a madman and his organisation from raising an apocalypse in a new world, the one yet to which we’ve left to adapt to. It is true that with every win there’s a loss and maybe Bakk’s research could change the world for the best, but it would bring too many casualties and so I knew that I did the right thing by not allowing it to continue. Every world, every disaster and every war has its hero and I am glad that this one was no exception.

THE END

© Copyright, Matthew Ashworth, 2007-2008.

Chapter 20 – Brain and bullets

This door led me into another big room and there was a big battle here as well. I recognized Jake from the crowd of UFR soldiers who were shooting at couple of Crepts. Jake was a heavy weapons expert and so at the moment was using a minigun. It was one of the latest models and had an incredible rate of fire with very penetrating ammo. I wasn’t surprised when I saw those two Crepts go down in seconds.
He suddenly saw me and spoke into his radio:
- “Boss, he’s here.”
He then gave order to couple of UFR soldiers to go for me. They obeyed and aimed their guns at me. I shot at them from V SMG and both of them collapsed onto the floor dead. I then discarded it as I had no more ammo left in it. Here Jake aimed his minigun at me and opened fire. I quickly hid behind some metal boxes. The ammo of the minigun was so strong that it was moving the boxes from their place even, considering they probably weighed tonnes. I knew that boxes won’t hold me here for long as soon the bullets will penetrate and will get me, therefore I aimed at the chains supporting a platform with boxes hanging off the ceiling of the room. Once I shot one of the chains the whole platform tilted and the boxes slid off and fell. Jake saw that and therefore jumped out of the way. Most of the boxes missed him, but one managed to land on his feet.
I quickly came out of cover. Jake dropped his minigun, but he also had a RAM17 rocket launcher with him, so he equipped it to his crufacle quite quickly and began shooting from the ground. He couldn’t get up as the box was still trapping one of his feet.
The missiles were fast, so I couldn’t shoot them down, but instead only could run for my life. Suddenly two Maliffs reached Jake. One of them snatched the rocket launcher off his hands and snapped it in two, while another one began slapping his face really hard. Jake took out a V pistol and shot at that Maliff several times till it died. The other Maliff went for me however, but didn’t get very far as I shot him down within 2 seconds.
There was no-one else alive in the room now except for me and Jake. Jake aimed at me with his V pistol and pressed the trigger but it was out of ammo. I slowly walked up to him and began saying:
- “I cannot believe that you betrayed us. You were our best man! How could you turn your back on us and work for these freaks?!”
- “Because Chuck is a clever man and he knows what he’s doing. I too think that it is us humans who have to adapt to the planet and not the environment that has to adapt to us.” Jake justified himself.
- “Well we’re not supernatural beings you know. There’s only so much that we can do, but we can’t be Gods.” I explained.
- “I don’t care about it anymore.” Jake said, “Are you gonna kill me? You don’t have the guts.”
- “No, I don’t. But they do.” I said when I saw a hoard of Vagros with a few Maliffs approaching the room’s entrance in the corridor, “Farewell fellow comrade.”
At this point I picked up Jake’s minigun and a couple of lime grenades from fallen UFR soldiers and left the room through one of the other doors in it. I was now in a small corridor that split into three. I knew that Chuck has to be near somewhere. The minigun was very heavy and was wearing me out already. I read the signs on the wall. The one on the left said ‘weaponry & labs’, the one on the right said ‘exit’ and the one straight on said ‘Adreno-man machine’.
I had a feeling that I should be heading to the ‘Adreno-man’ room. As I made my decision and began walking in that direction I could hear Jake’s screams from the previous room. I finally reached a big door in front of me. It had a retinal scanner next to it. I knew it won’t grant me access, so began thinking of an alternative way. After few seconds of thinking the door magically opened. Chuck must’ve been expecting me.
I walked into the room. It was massive with a relatively small in comparison machine in the centre of it.
- “What a waste of space.” I commented.
Here I heard Chuck’s voice:
- “What a waste of talent!”
I turned to the sound of the voice instantaneously and saw Chuck sitting behind a huge turret gun or better to say turret guns. It was by the other entrance into the room.
- “Make your next few breaths count, agent, because they’ll be your last.” Chuck said menacingly.
At this moment he began firing from one of the guns. Its rate of fire was even higher than of this minigun that Jake was using. I ran behind the Adreno-man machine as I knew that a) it’s the only cover in the room and b) Chuck won’t shoot at it.
And I was right, he stopped firing. I quickly came out and opened fire from the minigun and managed to destroy a couple of the guns mounted to that turret. However the ammo ran out in no time.
- “Damn, bad timing!” I said to myself.
Chuck then fired from a laser cannon, but I went behind Adreno-man again. I knew that he might’ve had bullets but I had brain. Now it was the time to use the lime grenades, both of them. I activated them both and threw one on the either side of the machine. Chuck could see two clouds of mist, but he didn’t know which one I was going to use. He began blindly shooting at one.
- “Are you dead yet?” He shouted.
- “In your dreams.” I said.
He then shot at the other one.
- “Now you are!” He shouted.
What he didn’t know is that I used them simply for distraction and while he was shooting at them, I climbed on top of Adreno-man where he couldn’t see me.
- “So much for the great hero.” Chuck said, but didn’t leave the turret yet as he wanted the obscure clouds to disappear and to make sure I am dead.
I then aimed at Chuck from the top with my V pistol. I had only two shots left. I shot once and got Chuck in the right arm. He now spotted me and got very angry, so he forgot about his Adreno-man completely and shot at me from a rocket launcher part of the turret with his left hand. The rocket exploded next to where I was standing, so I lost my balance and fell all the way down. It hurt a lot, but I got used to falling by now.
Chuck then left the turret gun and walked up to me while holding a V pistol with an outstretched arm.
- “It’s too bad that you rejected joining us. We could’ve prepared humanity for a bright future.”
- “You call those monsters future?!” I asked him angrily while still on the ground.
- “They are of little concern. Soon to be extinct, don’t worry. We will replace VENUS force and will rule the world. I will be the richest man in the world.”
I got tired of listening to the crap coming from his lips and so decided to risk it and to shoot in his direction with my last bullet. I got him in the left shoulder and so he dropped his V pistol.
- “You idiot!” he cursed.
I then got up onto my feet carefully and walked up to him. I looked him directly in the eyes and said:
- “You know what? I don’t like your future. If you do however then here, go and experience it.”
At this stage I grabbed Chuck into a policeman lock, led him towards the Adreno-man machine and locked him to the seat.
- “What are you doing?” Chuck asked.
- “You’re soon to find out.” I said and activated the machine.
I then set it onto the highest setting and pressed ‘go’. Chuck began getting charged with adrenaline, but as it was on the highest setting it was lethal. After couple of minutes he began shaking in the seat really crazily, his skin began getting very red and his eyes began turning liquid.
The machine itself couldn’t withstand the highest setting for too long and so began giving out sparks and strange noises. It set Chuck on fire after a while. He was pretty much beyond death by now. I knew it was time to leave, but as I started making my way out of the room the machine exploded, engulfing me in the explosion.

Chapter 19 – One man against a legion

I came out into a corridor leading straight out of the big room where I had a conversation with the UFR trio. Amazing how there were no more soldiers left in there. I then started making my way in the other direction of the corridor – towards action. A few of UFR soldiers got on my way so I shot them down without any hesitation. I had years of armed combat experience, so I was good at headshots and therefore could take out a target pretty quickly. Also from so much experience I knew likely hiding and ambushing spots, so none of the UFR soldiers really surprised me.
I then entered another big room. It was full of crates and other junk and some fighting was happening here. I could see some soldiers trying to bring down a pack of Maliffs and a few Vagros. Well I wasn’t gonna get in a way of course and just kept on trotting across the room where hardly anyone will spot me.
Suddenly I caught a glimpse of someone. It was a sniper and he was aiming at me. I quickly ducked behind one of the crates for cover and here I heard him shoot and miss me.
- “Phew! One more second and I could’ve been a corpse.” I thought to myself.
I had nothing else on me but a V pistol and a V submachine gun that I picked up from one of the guards I killed earlier. I had no more grenades left.
I peeked out and began to shoot in sniper’s direction with my V pistol while aiming as much as I possibly could, but he was too far away and I kept on missing his head by just.
After a few failed attempts I then heard screams and when looked at the sniper saw him being eaten alive by some Vagros.
- “Always there when you need them.” I said and came out of cover.
I continued going through the room towards one of the doors that was furthest away from the massive battle of some UFR soldiers and pack of Maliffs.
The door led me into another room. It was empty, yet I could feel someone’s presence there. Suddenly I saw a grenade fly in my direction. It was a lime grenade. Lime grenades spray many tiny droplets of lime water into the surrounding medium and as Venus’ atmosphere is so filled up with carbon dioxide (even in climate-controlled areas) the lime water would turn milky and will obscure the visibility. It was our alternative to smoke grenades. I momentarily hid behind one of the doors so then I wouldn’t be a sitting duck in the middle of the room.
When the droplets cleared off and visibility almost returned to normal, which was about 20 seconds after the explosion, I saw someone stand in front of the other door leading out of the room.
I came out of my cover and approached. When the visibility got completely normal I could see that it was Troy.
- “So impatient to fight me again, eh?” I asked him.
- “This is where your life ends.” Troy said menacingly.
- “Bring it on then.” I challenged him.
At this moment Troy pulled out a V pistol and shot in my direction. I ducked in time and opened fire on him from V submachine gun. He rolled out of the line of fire as he usually does. At this moment however some creatures burst into the room from the entrance I came in. There were pretty much all the different kinds. A few Maliffs and a Crept went for me, while two Nixes and a few Vagros went for Troy.
Troy was still shooting at me though, considering the creatures cornered him. I tried to avoid his fire while making sure none of the creatures comes close to me. I quickly reloaded my V SMG and began shooting. The Maliffs went down quickly, but Crept was tough as usual. I then began leading him in Troy’s direction. Troy was also fighting his deal of creatures, but I could see that he wasn’t as good as he was in those thieving missions when we failed to catch him. I understood that he was not currently charged with Adreno-man, so knew that he wasn’t much of a threat. Crept stopped going for me and began going for Troy. Troy took out a shockwave grenade and threw towards Crepts massive mouth. Crept bit the grenade as it came close causing it to explode. This happened pretty close to me and Troy and so both of us were sent back flying by a shockwave.
As I began getting up, Troy pounced on me and was trying to stab me with something. I stopped his arm in time and took a better look at it. It was one of the advanced versions of electron stunners. These actually could kill a victim, so I was trying my best to keep it away from my throat. I then kicked Troy in the chest and this pushed him back. I began getting up quickly. Troy took out his V pistol and said:
- “Sleep well, hero.”
He then was about to shoot when one of the Nixes rammed into his back, stabbing its shoulder spikes deep into Troy. The spikes even came out of Troy’s chest.
- “Kind regards.” I saluted him as he began dying.
The remaining two Nixes began charging at me. I then started running for the exit that I came through initially, back into a big room. Looks like the soldiers won the fight there and there were even more of them. All of them aimed at me, but I knew that I couldn’t stop as two deadly beasts were right behind me.
I blindly ran into a crowd of UFR soldiers. I was not on their mind anymore. All of them were more concerned about the two Nixes that hit the same crowd a few seconds after I did, giving those soldiers a similar fate as Troy.
I finally managed to make my way out of the mob and ran for the next door I could see. It led into a smallish corridor with a couple of doors at the sides and a stairs at the end. The two doors were locked, so I just proceeded up the stairs. Three guards spotted me, but I shot them all down. Right after that I heard a familiar buzz. I looked up and saw two UFR soldiers being chased by some Ganos.
- “Isn’t that a nice sight?” I commented.
I then picked up a shockwave grenade from one of the recently killed guards, activated it and threw into a group of Ganos. The explosion killed many Ganos, as well as those two cowardly soldiers. The rest of the Ganos scattered away.
I continued along the corridor until I reached a fork. To my right I could see an entrance into a room with one of the exits out of the base and there was a really massive battle happening there between the creatures and UFR soldiers. I decided not to disturb them and therefore headed left through one of the doors.

Chapter 18 – Navigate the beasts

After couple of minutes of crawling into random turns in the vent I reached an end. I peeked through the holes in the vent and the room seemed to be clear so I pushed the lid open and came out of the vent.
- “Now, just got to be more careful.” I said to myself.
My heart was still beating pretty fast as I thought I could have easily died back there. I looked around the room. It was pretty small and relatively empty. There was one door leading out of it. I silently opened the door and looked out. It led into a bigger room with lots of computers. There was a guard sitting behind them and one more guard standing right beside him.
I very quietly crawled through the door, walked up to the standing guard and then in one swift motion smacked him on the head with my V pistol. That knocked him out. The other guard got alerted momentarily to this, but I quickly put a gun against his face.
- “Don’t move!” I said.
- “Please don’t shoot me. I’m just doing my job.”
- “Well don’t.” I commanded.
- “All right fine. I don’t care about any researches that are going on in here. I just work here for the money.”
- “OK, well me and my team are going to blow this place to hell, so your co-operation would be much appreciated.” I said.
- “All right fine. Just don’t shoot me.” The guy said.
- “First of all, explain to me this creature repellent device.” I demanded.
- “OK, we have a giant engine-kind of device, invented in these labs very recently in fact and it basically is responsible for keeping creatures out of the main area of the base by emitting radio waves of a very specific frequency that messes up brain activity of creatures but not of humans. The mini version of this device is also installed in the crufacles of all the UFR members.” The guy explained.
- “Can you disable it?”
- “Well… yes I can. Why would you want to do that? We all will die!”
- “I need creatures to keep most of the guards busy. Disable it. All of them.” I commanded.
- “OK OK. Just calm down.”
The guy pressed a few buttons and then there was a strange sound heard.
- “The creature repellent devices have been disabled.” He informed me.
- “Good.” I said, “Now open all the outside doors.”
He obeyed and did so.
- “Will you be able to also send transmissions outside of the base?”
- “Yes I can.” The man said.
- “Good, contact my VENUS station. The code for that is 11C5R721.” I told him.
He began typing the code in. At this moment two UFR guards walked into the room.
- “Mate, why have you switched creature repellent off?” they were saying while entering, but then both spotted me, “What the…?!”
At this moment I quickly pointed my V pistol at them and produced two shots. Both shots got them in the head, killing them this way. The sitting guard at this moment got up and tackled me. We both fell onto the ground.
- “You pathetic retard!” I cursed.
He began punching me at this moment. Here I got out a WD-15 electron stunner from my crufacle pocket. We use them during extreme emergencies and they are basically like tazers but much more powerful and can even knock the person out. I stabbed the needle of WD-15 into the guard’s neck and activated it. The guy began shaking from jolts of numerous electrons entering his body. He fell onto the ground beside me and was pretty much knocked out.
I got up from the floor and approached the computers.
- “All right, let’s see how to do this.” I said and finished inputting the code and pressed ‘Contact’.
About 3 seconds later I reached my VENUS station. One of the agents was on the other end.
- “Yes, I need to speak to David.” I said.
A couple of seconds later David responded from the other end:
- “Yes? Who is this?”
- “Hey, it’s me – Jim.”
- “Jim? You’re still alive! Brilliant. What happened?”
- “Too long to explain, but I found the base and need some back up.”
- “I’m sorry Jim.” David said, “But Bravo team hit trouble. They mentioned that some creatures attacked them.”
- “Damn!” I said, “All right, in that case I’ll have to do this alone.”
- “Where is this base?” David asked.
- “I don’t know exactly. Hey, if I don’t call again then I am dead, but otherwise keep waiting for my call.” I said and here disconnected the call.
I then looked at the security camera terminals and could see that lots of creatures were entering the base through all the entrances.
- “Good.” I said, “Come to daddy.”
I then left the terminals and prepared to leave when I spotted a manual next to all the terminals. It was called ‘Adreno-man guide’. I opened it for a few seconds out of curiosity as I’ve never heard of a device called ‘Adreno-man’. I read about what it does and it said that it can temporarily increase levels of adrenaline in a person, something up to 2 hours or so. Low setting gives more focus, medium setting allows extremely good reactions and high setting is pretty much for extreme situations and using high setting on yourself too often could kill you. I wondered where this Adreno-man machine was located. That thief Troy must’ve been charged with it before he set out on his missions and that is why he was so good. This base truly did come up with some amazing devices.
I looked at the two knocked out guards, then at two dead guards and finally made my way out of the room.

Chapter 17 – Conspiracy

Suddenly the lights came on and I could see numerous soldiers aiming their guns at me. They wore the same dark red uniforms as the two dead guys I’ve seen earlier in the chamber with lava tanks.
After about half minute of looking around I finally spotted 3 guys in the middle who began approaching me. One looked a bit familiar. In fact two were kind of familiar. Or to be honest my instincts kept on telling me as if I knew them all. When they got very close to me together with a few of their bodyguards the main one spoke:
- “Let’s speak. Put down your weapon.”
- “Why?” I asked.
- “There’s no point to fight back.” He answered.
I looked around once again and then thought that I was heavily outnumbered so put down all of my weapons.
- “Who are you?” I asked.
- “My name is Chuck.” The main guy spoke, “These here are Jake and Troy…”
- “Jake? The best current V.E.N.U.S. member Jake?” I couldn’t believe it.
- “Yes my friend. And I believe you also met Troy - my thieving infiltrator. We are the UFR.”
- “You are the Unidentified Flying Retards?” I mocked.
- “Very funny Mr Rocker. Actually we are the United Force of Revolution. I believe you work for V.E.N.U.S.” Chuck said.
- “Hey, how do you know my name?” I got very interested.
- “Well I know much more about you and V.E.N.U.S. than you think.” Chuck began when I interrupted him:
- “I knew that someone linked to V.E.N.U.S. was behind all this.” I got angry.
- “I am not your enemy, Mr Rocker. I used to work for V.E.N.U.S. In fact I worked together with your dad. He only worked with us for a week or so but he was a good soldier.”
- “Is that why you killed him?” I got even angrier and took out my dad’s diary to show him.
- “I didn’t kill him. It was my boss – Bakk. He sent your dad and a few other excellent soldiers on a suicide mission. He wanted to get rid of anyone who could oppose him.” Chuck said.
- “Who is Bakk?” I asked.
- “He used to be one of V.E.N.U.S. commanders and I was his favourite because I always followed orders. He had a great idea, a great plan to make Venus a good home for humans. However the government did not approve of his idea and so he took over these labs and kept all the researches here secret.” Chuck was saying.
- “Like project ‘The Great Survivor’?!” I mentioned with anger.
- “You know more than I thought. Where did you hear that name?” Chuck was astonished.
- “It’s none of your concern.” I replied.
Chuck laughed here and then continued:
- “Well then you understand why Bakk started it.”
- “No I don’t.” I said sternly, “I don’t see anything good of doing experiments on poor humans and turning them into those beasts.”
- “Those were simply failed experiments. With every great discovery come casualties, with every win there’s loss.” Chuck began justifying.
- “So? Did that get you anywhere? No.” I said.
- “We’re still working on it. I am willing to continue the work Bakk started back in his days. Don’t you understand?! Humans will be able to breathe in carbon dioxide. Humans will be able to withstand high temperature and pressure. We will be able to walk outside without having to wear crufacles and there won’t be a need for those domes that make you feel like you’re in prison! We will be able to turn this planet into a home!”
- “You and Bakk are crazy.” I commented, “You’re trying to turn humans into Gods.”
- “So you’re not willing to help us then, Mr Rocker?” Chuck asked.
- “No way in hell!” I denied, “You can take your silly research, grab all your Unidentified Flying Retards and just blast yourselves off into the centre of the Sun, but leave the poor and innocent humans alone.”
- “As you wish.” Chuck said, “Jake, take Mr Rocker and place him into a torture room.”
- “Yes sir.” Jake began.
At this moment an alarm went off.
- “What now?!” Chuck got infuriated.
After a little while he received a call from one of his men:
- “Boss, there’s been a breach. We’ve got a hoard of Maliffs and Nixes.”
- “Can’t you take care of them?!” Chuck spoke into the radio.
- “No sir, they took care of the cameras and turrets by one of the entrances. We need a few men to defend the perimeter.”
- “Well is our creature repellent on?” Chuck asked angrily.
- “It’s set on low.” The answer came.
- “What kind of retard sets a creature repellent on low?!” Chuck got even angrier.
- “Sir we need some back up here!”
- “Fine, fine!” Chuck said, “Now…”
He was about to say something but here I quickly picked up my pistol, shot at the vent nearby and sprinted towards it.
- “Take him down!” Chuck shouted.
I quickly dived into the vent before anyone could even open fire and as soon as I did I could hear numerous bullets hitting the metal wall and floor. I began crawling through the dark vent, hoping for it to take me somewhere where I can refresh the attack.

Chapter 16 – A valuable find

I received a disrupted call from David again. Out of what he was saying I could only make out ‘Jim’, ‘you’ and ‘bravo’. Other than that there was too much noise in the signal to understand. I hoped he wouldn’t worry about me and began carefully inspecting the room with crawler vehicles.
There was a door leading out of the room. It was much lighter here and I seemed to be in some sort of corridor. I understood that I was in the secret base now as there was light everywhere and a few security cameras. I made sure none of the cameras see me and began slowly making my way towards one end of the corridor.
It reached a dead end soon with just one door. Surprisingly the door was unlocked. I walked in. It was a small room. Must’ve been a small storage area as I could see a lot of broken electronic equipment lying there.
- “Well I doubt anything interesting here.” I said quietly to myself.
But as I was about to exist, something caught my eye. It was another one of those electronic diaries. It was glowing from inside of a metal crate. I dug it out from the rest of the rubbish and decided to enter the file. It was dated 2108.
- “Wow! This one’s pretty old too.” I got interested.
The file seemed to be someone’s diary. He was a V.E.N.U.S. member and was talking about his mission. Someone seemed to have experienced the same hell as me and encountered the same beasts.
I read on and some of my thoughts started twisting. First of all his name was the same as my dad’s. Secondly he was talking about waking up from a coma after a crash landing when humanity arrived on planet Venus. Thirdly he spoke of his find that he had a 14 year old son that he didn’t know about and to be honest I was about 14 when we arrived to Venus. My analysis told me that this must’ve been my father’s diary. But I remember being told that he died from the crash landing of the ship where he was and that apparently there were no survivors. Why would they hide from us the fact that he was alive? And this were the V.E.N.U.S. members who informed me and my mother of that. Are they really behind all of this? It made sense. How else would that robber know all our tactics and when to expect us. But how come I didn’t know about this?
I disconnected my radio because of increasingly high suspicion and decided not to trust anyone, not even my own boss. These scums will definitely pay for my father’s death and for every other crime they committed.
I took this diary with me as well. Both of them could be handy as evidence when I make it out of here alive. I decided to head the other way through the corridor now. As usual I was avoiding to be seen by security cameras. There were numerous rooms to my left and right but all were locked.
I then reached a fork in the corridor. I stopped and thought for a while whether I should go left or right. My instincts told me to go right and here I reached some stairs leading up. I went up those stairs and was in another corridor. This one was smaller. Most rooms were locked, but the double door at the end was wide open. I decided to take my chances and to head through it, holding my finger on the trigger of MAγ-sniper rifle.
When I went through the double doors I found myself in a medium sized room. I avoided the security camera and began walking towards the next door when suddenly the double doors behind me closed loudly and the lights went out.
Something was wrong and I could smell it. I tried activating my night vision goggles but they ran out of power due to me using them so much recently, so looked like I had to continue in the dark when suddenly I heard a voice:
- “Stop where you are!”
I froze.

Chapter 15 – Underground passage

I got woken up by David’s radio call.
- “Yes?” I responded.
- “Jim. I sent in the Bravo team a long while ago and they are having a tough time finding you. Where are you guys?”
- “Dave, you shouldn’t have sent them in. And there is no more guys, there’s just me.” I answered.
At this moment I noticed Jeffrey’s corpse lying next to me. I almost jumped when I saw it.
- “What? It can’t be!” David’s voice came from the radio.
The signal was a bit distorted. It must have a difficult time reaching this place. I slowly got up onto my feet and then answered:
- “Believe me, it’s true. But don’t worry; I will end this once and for all.”
I looked around and saw that I was in a dark tunnel. It was an underground passage of some kind. Jeffrey’s MAγ-sniper rifle was lying next to his dead body. I decided to take it with me as I lost my other weapons except for V pistol and few shockwave grenades back in that steaming chamber. I was not very experienced with sniper rifles, but it was my only choice. I saw Jeffrey’s footsteps and could tell that they are coming from where he came from, therefore I want to go the other way and so I began walking through the dark tunnel.
A few seconds later I heard noises. Must be the creatures again I thought to myself and prepared. I could soon make out a couple of Vagros in the dark. I put away sniper rifle for the moment and took out V pistol as it was not worth wasting powerful sniper shots on Vagros.
I aimed with the V pistol at one of them and shot a few times. He went down. I then repeated the same thing with another one and he went down too. At this moment the ground beneath me moved. I momentarily stepped to the side and here Crept’s mouth emerged from the ground with an eye looking for the source of the sound. I shot at the eye with V pistol and looked like that Crept didn’t enjoy that at all. He sprung out of the ground completely and began to bite everything in a berserk fashion. I then took out the sniper rifle and shot. Two shots put that Crept down for eternal sleep. MAγ-sniper rifle was a pretty good weapon. Unlike other sniper rifles it uses pulses of gamma radiation instead of bullets to damage the victim and the photons are so strongly concentrated in each pulse that the strength of gamma radiation is immense, making this the best weapon for penetration purposes.
I continued through the really long tunnel which seemed to go on forever. I then understood that this is probably where most crawler vehicles pass through. This meant that the secret base was definitely somewhere ahead, but how much left to walk was still unclear.
On my way through this long tunnel I came across more creatures. There was a big pack of Vagros, an odd Nix and a few Maliffs with more Vagros. I managed to survive them all and after probably hour’s worth of walking I finally reached the end of the tunnel. I was right. The area I came into seemed to contain a few crawler vehicles. Almost all were Crawler-9. These guys must’ve been very secretive about everywhere they go.

Chapter 14 – The Swarm

I suddenly felt a gust of heat on my face. It was ridiculously hot and stuffy in this area. I wondered why. I looked around the place and saw some metal staircases around the area leading up somewhere. I approached one of them and began going up.
It seemed to be a series of platforms ordered neatly in one huge room. I knew I had to be careful as down below were plenty of tanks with lava. This must’ve been one of the places where they get energy from volcanoes. I thought of perhaps reaching the top and so started making my way up one staircase at a time.
Suddenly I heard buzzing. I thought that was just ringing in my ears, but after a reality check it sounded too real to be an illusion. I looked around the place but nothing could tell me where the buzzing might be coming from.
I continued going up the stairs and here something flew into my face and knocked me down. I fell down the staircase and hit my head hard.
I didn’t enjoy that at all, so after getting up I began going back up very slowly and here saw some Ganos. They suddenly began coming out of all the possible corners of the place.
- “Must be my luck.” I said and didn’t move from place.
The swarm of Ganos began approaching me. I quickly went back down those stairs and began running towards another staircase leading up. The swarm of Ganos looked really neat, not a single Ganos was out of place. They began catching up, so I quickly turned around and shot out of my SSS. A couple of Ganos fell out of the swarm and died. I then shot again and two more died.
- “This is not enough.” I said to myself.
Here the swarm reached me. I quickly dived out of the way, but a few Ganos flew into me still and so I slid towards the edge of the platform and fell over the board. My reactions saved me as I grabbed onto the edge with both of my hands. My shotgun however didn’t get so lucky and plunged right down into the steaming lava tank.
- “Perfect.” I commented sarcastically and pushed myself back up onto the platform.
The swarm began approaching me again. I got out the V-blast SMG that I found earlier and began firing at the swarm. It seemed to work a bit more effectively than SSS as a few bullets were enough to bring one down and rate of fire was pretty good. However I was killing only a tiny part of the swarm and so instincts told me to keep running, so I did.
I finally reached the desired staircase and began the ascension. There were a few more platforms left to the top. I then ran along another platform towards more stairs. There were a couple of dead bodies here and they seemed fresh. They wore a strange uniform of dark red colour. This told me that I was close to the secret base.
A few Ganos caught up with me and attempted to sting me, but I dodged them in time. One of them managed though to snatch my V blast SMG with its mouth and to bite it in half.
- “Now that is just great.” I said sarcastically again, “Only a V pistol left now.”
I knew for sure that with V pistol I wouldn’t stand a chance, especially that the bulk of the swarm was approaching again.
I quickly braced myself for the worst and sprinted as fast as I could towards the last staircase and ran via it up to the top platform. It seemed to lead to a big metal double door. I ran up to the door and attempted to push it open, but it was electronically locked. There was also a security camera next to it. As soon as I saw it I stepped out of its field of view because I didn’t want enemies to expect me.
The swarm then reached my location but stopped a few metres away from the door. Something kept them back, but I couldn’t understand what. As if there was some kind of force there.
I turned back towards the door and tried to figure out a way to open it, but nothing seemed to help. I was stranded there.
My instincts started to go crazy again and so I began looking around the place frantically. There must’ve been another way. I then spotted a broken wall a few platforms down. After some thinking I decided to check it out as it was my only way. I looked at the swarm carefully before moving and then at the destination, planned my moves and then instantaneously took off. I jumped from this platform to the next one down. The swarm resumed following me. I recovered from the jump and continued running towards the next jump. That jump was a lot rougher, but I still got up after that and kept on running.
The swarm was still on my tail when I reached the hole in the wall. I dived into it and slid a long way down through the darkness, losing my consciousness at the end of the fall.

Chapter 13 – Blood and guts

The three of us quickly went out of the room and through the next few rooms. We came into a corridor. As we were making our way through there I received a radio call from David:
- “Jim, how are you guys holding up? I haven’t received a message from any of you in a while.”
- “Well we hit trouble.” I said, “There are some kind of bloodthirsty creatures down here.”
- “What kind of creatures?” David got confused.
- “They were results of failed experiments.” I said, “And sir, we lost Jeffrey.”
- “What?! Lost as in don’t know where he is, or lost as in dead?”
- “Dead sir. We heard him die over the radio.” I clarified.
- “How could this happen?!” David couldn’t believe it. I could sense anger in his voice.
- “I am sorry sir.”
- “Well should I send in a bravo team? Do you need back up?”
- “It’s no point really.” I began, “It’s a suicide mission here.”
- “Yes we need back up.” Rick suddenly said.
- “All right I am sending in the bravo team.” David said.
I gave Rick a puzzled look and then asked:
- “Rick, why are you doing this?”
- “Come on Jim, we will die down here alone!” Rick justified himself.
- “It’s better just three of us to die here rather than the whole team.” I said, “Never mind, it’s probably too late now anyway. Let’s just go and get this over with.”
We proceeded through the corridor and in the middle of it came across a pack of Vagros. We opened fire on them. Many were dying quickly, but a lot more were coming.
- “Guys, fall back a bit.” I said.
We began going back while shooting them. Here a few Maliffs joined the fight.
- “Aim for Maliffs.” I said.
- “No problemo.” Jack agreed.
We began shooting at Maliffs. I needed to reload here and so did this in quick succession. One Maliff came pretty close, so I threw a shockwave grenade into the crowd of creatures and me and my teammates quickly ran out of the radius of explosion before it happened. I could hear numerous creature screams.
Suddenly Rick screamed. Jack and I looked in his direction and there was a mouth coming out of the floor that grabbed him by the waist. It then came out of the floor and we could see that it was part of a Crept. It was of similar colour to Vagros and looked exactly like in the description – it had a big jaw and a snake like body with a sting at the end.
- “Damn, these are ugly-looking bastards.” Jack said and both of us began shooting at the Crept, but it kept on holding Rick and at one moment snapped its mouth shut ripping Rick in two.
Jack and I couldn’t believe it. Rick was bleeding heavily and could barely move. Crept’s only eye came out from inside of its mouth and saw us. That Crept then attempted to bite Jack, but we brought it down quickly enough.
At this moment one of the Maliffs pounced onto my back and together we fell onto the ground. He tried to slap me with his jagged tongue, but I had my SSS on the way. Here Jack shot at Maliff’s head point blank, bursting it. But as soon as that happened two more Maliffs came and grabbed Jack. I barely removed the dead body of Maliff that tried to kill me off myself and got up. I wanted to help Jack, but the Maliffs broke his legs and then snapped his neck.
- “Noooo!” I screamed and then went berserk on them with my shotgun fire. They went down quickly as each shot got them in the face.
A few more Vagros were just remaining, but I cleaned them out without any problems. This was a tiring fight and I could barely breathe because of so much adrenaline. I looked over at the bodies of Jack and Rick, then at all the bodies of the creatures. It was too shocking and extremely scary to realise that you’re left here by yourself.
However I knew that going back would be just as bad as continuing with the mission, so I decided to continue the mission. I slowly got up onto my feet completely and began to slowly walk along the corridor until I reached its end.
When I exited the corridor I found myself in a relatively big room, but it was quiet. Maybe all those creatures that we just killed were in here. I continued making my way through the room till I reached two doors. Both were locked.
- “Well now that is just great, isn’t it?!” I got mad.
I decided to set up breach explosives on them both, then stepped aside and detonated both of them. One door led into a room full of weapons. Those weapons however were slightly older versions of what we used now. However extra ammo can always be handy, so I collected some ammo for my SSS and also got myself a V SMG. You never know when rapid fire is needed and as I lost my two teammates I’ll have to do the fighting on my own.
I then heard some sounds, so I quickly exited the weapons room into the big room and saw a Crept with two Nixes. They seemed to have heard the battle or something and now they spotted me and wanted to feast on me.
- “Sorry, not today.” I said to them, then quickly got out two shockwave grenades, activated them, dropped them by my feet and then quickly ran through the next door.
A couple of seconds later I heard explosions and monster screams. I carried on through the corridor here until I reached a slightly bigger door with a damaged warning sign.
‘No unauthorized access! Danger of burning!’ it said on the sign. Well I had no choice but to push the door open with all my might and to enter the next area.

Chapter 12 – Sickening experiments

We breathed deeply after that encounter and in a few seconds carried on.
- “Guys, do you think chief still wants us to do this mission considering these creatures live here?” Jack wondered.
- “I really don’t know, Jack.” I said, “I very much hope that we will reach that base soon enough and that these creatures are merely a hallucination.”
- “Well they’re definitely not a hallucination.” Jack said.
- “I hope that none of us end up like Jeffrey.” Rick said.
- “Tell me about it.” I said, “That snapping sound was pretty scary.”
We entered a slightly larger room than all the ones before. It had plenty of various equipment there but that equipment was all broken.
- “Hey guys, is that those creatures as well?” Rick pointed towards two figures not too far away.”
Suddenly the two figures turned towards us and I could definitely be sure that they were some of those creatures too. However they were different to two other types we’ve met so far. These ones were kind of green, had a slightly pointed face and also had spikes of weird shapes sticking out of various places in their body.
- “Ouch!” I quietly said to myself.
- “Guys I don’t like the look they are giving us.” Jack said.
The creatures then roared and began to gently trot in our direction.
- “All right guys, open fire!” I commanded and we did.
These guys could take quite a few shots before they went down. One of them even reached us and smacked Rick in the face before dying.
- “Rick, you all right?” I asked him.
- “Yeah I’m fine. It’s just a bruise.” Rick said.
He received a black eye from that hit.
- “Well I sure hope there isn’t anything stronger.” Jack said.
- “Who knows.” I began, “From what I’ve seen so far anything is possible. I wonder what kind of other monsters are here waiting for us.”
- “And how do those bad guys survive them?” Rick added.
- “They must have some way of controlling them or perhaps avoiding contact with them.” I guessed.
We then looked around the room, but nothing gave any clues so we continued to the next few rooms. There was a staircase down. We went through it and entered another big room with some broken equipment.
- “Guys, watch out. If anything moves – shoot it.” I warned.
Finally we saw something glowing in the corner of the room. We slowly walked up to it. There was a fresh corpse next to it.
- “Sucks to be this guy.” Jack said.
I then kneeled down and looked at the glowing object. It was one of those electronic diaries. I picked it up and open its file.
- “What’s on it, Jim?” Rick asked.
- “Let’s see.” I said.
There was only 1 file saved on it. It was called ‘creature report’.
- “Ah finally, something to enlighten us on the creatures.” I said.
- “Read it.” Jack said.
I began reading it:

‘Creature report by doctors Kegs, Max, Raymonds and McKen.

We are starting this report to describe the experiments involved in the project ‘The Great Survivor’ and various tests used on human subjects. Unfortunately all of these are the failed experiments turning test subjects into beasts. The names of the creatures are taken from the surnames of the original test subjects to take part in each experiment.

Vagro
Named after Raul Vagro this experiment involved injecting the subject with a modified B-virus and concentrated Sodium Glucathol in a mixture of some Slik water. The subject seemed not to show any effect up to 48 hours. After 48-51 hours hunger became very prevalent. After about 64 hours the subject lost sight and after approximately 72 hours the transformation began. The subject turned into a 4-legged, eyeless, but orienting purely on its sense of smell beast. It is highly contagious and we’ve discovered that one bite can induce the same effects in healthy humans.

Maliff
Received its name after Timothy Maliff, who used to be one of the scientists working here, but tested the new ingredients on himself. The experiment involvedthe same virus and a slightly more dilute Sodium Glucathol, and an hour after injection, ingestion of a pellet containing Iron bromide and Hydrogen Karkoxide has occurred. The test subject felt very energetic for 28 hours after which its muscle fibres began to grow in size. After about 49 hours the subject began growing tongue tissue as well and after about 55 hours the full transformation began. Maliffs can infect humans in the same way as Vagros, i.e. through bite, but they also can infect if a human touches their tongue as their tongue contains masses of creature’s blood.

- “I hope you didn’t touch Maliff’s tongue when you shoved that grenade in his mouth.” Jack said to me.
- “Don’t worry I didn’t.” I said and carried on reading:

Nix
Got its name after James Nix, this result is achieved by a constant ingestion of Potassium 3-methylglucathol and B-virus for 4 hours every hour. Potassium 3-methylglucathol is achieved by a complex reaction involving Sodium glucathol and potassium carbalyl. The symptoms did not start until about 30 hours after first ingestion. After about 30 hours the subject’s eyes increased in size, the hairs clumped together into very dense keratin structures looking like spikes, and the face began to elongate. After about 51 hours the subject’s face reached its peak elongation and some unusual brain activity was detected. After approximately 66 hours the subject reached full transformation. Nixes mostly pass on their infection by human contact with their spikes and teeth.

Crept
This creature received its name from Gavin Crept. The experiment involved dilute Sodium glucathol again mixed with B virus, but this time also mixed with Barium pentoxide and injected into the subject. This then amplified by treating the point of injection with slight gamma radiation. The subject’s mouth began to extend 8 hours after injection. By 20 hours it pretty much was the only part of the face left, except for the two eyes which merged into one. By about 32 hours the subject’s limbs merged with the torso forming a snake-like body. By 35 hours the transformation is complete. Crepts too pass their infection through the bite, but also through a sting on their tail.

Ganos
The creature got its name from Alexander Ganos. The procedure here was quite complex. It involved high doses of radiation and many many chemicals that have only been created recently. However B-virus and Sodium glucathol were still used in the conjunction with them. The subject behaved itself very erratically pretty much a few minutes after end of operation. By about 12 hours a slow transformation into something that looks like a giant bee began. By about 24 hours the transformation was complete. Ganos do not transmit infection through bite, but only through sting.

- “This is sickening.” I commented.
- “I seriously do not wanna know exactly how Ganos and Crept look like in reality.” Rick said.
- “Neither do I.” I said.
- “Well guys, we better hurry. I mean it said that Vagros can smell their prey, so they must smell us here if we don’t move out.” Jack suggested.
- “That’s a good point, Jack.” I said, “Let’s move out and get the hell out of this damned place.”

Chapter 11 – Operation Silent Tank

As we went through the door we were very curious. To our surprise the place looked stale and dirty as if no base was located here. However we did not allow that to fool us and so we proceeded with caution. We could compress our crufacles here.
- “Hey guys, I am thinking of us splitting up.” Jeffrey said.
- “Are you sure it’s a good idea.” Rick asked him.
- “Yeah, I usually work alone anyway and we will cover more area this way.” Jeffrey said, “Just keep each other in check via the radio.”
- “Are you sure you don’t want us to split into 2 people in each group?” I suggested.
- “Nah, I’m fine.” Jeffrey said, “You three go on forwards. I will try to check the area over here.”
- “As you wish.” I said.
So Jeffrey began checking out the chambers in this area, while Jack, Rick and myself proceeded to the next area. The corridors and rooms were not completely dark, but they were very poorly lit. The whistle of the air moving through the corridors gave me the chills. This place was real spooky.
After few minutes of walking me and my teammates came across another big door. On the floor it looked like a path of dried up blood leading towards it. Something really nasty must have happened here when this place was still functional. We decided to go through the door, fighting our fear as best as we could.
Once through the door we could smell a nasty stench. The smell was indescribable. It was slightly darker here. We then received a radio message from Jeffrey:
- “Hey guys, I am currently descending through some stairs and it is a pretty long walk down and very dark here. How about you?”
I then replied back through the radio:
- “We got through another door and it looked like there was a path of dried up blood leading to it. I sense danger.”
- “Yeah I sense it too.” Jeffrey replied through the radio.
Suddenly 3 of us heard some kind of weird noise, sounded kind of like a cat purring but much louder and with slight screaming added to it.
- “What in the world was that?!” Rick asked with fear.
- “I have no idea, but it is scaring the living crap out of me.” I said.
- “Are you sure we want to go down there.” Rick asked.
- “We’ve got to.” I said.
- “This doesn’t seem like a secret base with labs.” Rick said.
- “It might be a bit further.” Jack said, “Like Jim said, they’ll have an alternate way in, but we have to go through this mess.”
Rick didn’t argue anymore and therefore just followed me and Jack. Suddenly the purring was heard again but much closer this time. After a few seconds we heard some walking, but it sounded like the claws on a metal floor.
- “This doesn’t sound like a human.” Jack said.
- “Well it is definitely some kind of a life form.” I said, “I hope it doesn’t bite.”
Three of us proceeded carefully through the remainder of the corridor until we came into a series of chambers. At this moment we heard the purr really loudly to our right and all three of us momentarily turned around.
Something stood there. Something we’ve never seen before. It was definitely alive. It was standing on 4 paws, had no eyes, just a big mouth with 4 tentacles around it and a strange-looking double tail. The creature was of creamy-brown colour.
We stood still when we saw it, we didn’t know what to say. At this second I decided to inform Jeffrey of this, so I contacted him through the radio:
- “Jeffrey,” I began, “There’s a…”
At this moment the creature screamed loudly and ran towards us very fast.
- “Stay back!” Rick began shouting, but the creature still ran, so he opened fire and shot it down.
- “That was close.” I said.
- “Jim, are you guys OK there?” Jeffrey’s voice came through the radio.
- “Yeah I think so. We just came across a strange creature.” I said.
- “Oh shit!” Jeffrey said.
- “What is it?” I asked.
- “There’s one over here too.” His voice came, “it looks like a…”
- “A big dog but no eyes and big mouth in place of face. Right?” I asked.
- “No.” the reply came, “Actually, there are a few at a distance I can see.”
- “So what’s the other one?” I asked.
- “Jim! Look!” Jack suddenly screamed.
I turned and saw more of those strange creatures running towards us from the darkness.
- “Crap!” I cursed and aimed my SSS at them.
All three of us aimed at the pack and opened fire. The creatures went down quickly, but there was quite a big number of them. Suddenly Jeffrey’s voice came through the radio again:
- “Hey! Aaargh! That was my leg! Aaarghrtgh!”
And after that we heard a lot of bone crunching sounds.
- “Shit! They got Jeffrey!” Rick panicked.
Jack and I went quiet. The sounds that came through the radio were too disturbing to even comment on.
- “All right guys, there is nothing we could’ve done.” I said after a few seconds, “ Let’s carry on.”
- “No, that’s it. I am not going in there.” Rick got angry.
- “Come on Rick. You wouldn’t really leave Jack and me here by ourselves, would you? I mean we have to stick together if we are to survive this.”
Rick went silent and after some thinking said:
- “All right.”
Here something burst out of the floor and grabbed Jack.
- “Hey!” Jack got scared.
It was a slightly bigger creature. Rick and I quickly aimed at its face and opened fire. Its face was grotesque. It had something like 3 eyes and a big jagged tongue. It also looked pretty strong and muscly and was of bluish-grey colour. We shot the creature’s eyes and it released Jack. However new eyes grew out of its head in an instant. It headed for me and picked me up. I quickly got out a shockwave grenade, activated it and shoved it into creature’s mouth when it attempted to bite a chunk out of me. The creature then released me due to Jack and Rick shooting at it.
- “Guys, take cover!” I screamed.
All three of us jumped out of the way and the creature blew up into bits of flesh.
- “Well done.” Jack commented.
- “What the hell was that?” Rick asked.
- “I don’t know, but I hope there isn’t anything bigger.” I said.

Chapter 10 – The gruesome hills

The flight didn’t take so long, but because we were nervous every second seemed to go on forever. Our Alpha team landed in a different area to Bravo and Charlie as we needed to go in through the lower levels and to skip all the higher levels. This meant that we had to stop in a valley near to Dome #13. The steepness of the hills next to it didn’t allow us to stop close to it, even though Spiflyers were good at landing almost on anything. This meant we’ll have to have a bit of a walk uphill.
And that’s exactly what happened. The walk was very gruesome and tiring, especially considering we had to walk uphill with our crufacles being full-blown. While half-way there I got a radio call from David:
- “Jim, have you guys arrived yet?”
- “We landed but we are still walking up to the entrance.” I replied.
- “Excellent. Keep me informed every now and then.” He said.
- “Yes sir.” I said.
We continued our walk. A few paces on Rick and Jack wanted some rest. So we did it. I checked that magazines in my guns were loaded and ready to use. Weapons I carried were V pistol and SSS. Jack and Rick both had V submachineguns and V pistol, and Jeffrey had MAγ(gamma) sniper rifle and a V pistol.
About 5 minutes later we carried on. The cliffs were nasty, but nothing can beat the spirit of V.E.N.U.S. members. We reached the lower level entrance to Dome #13 soon. That entrance was not used in years, so we had to throw a couple of shockwave grenades at the door and rubble next to it for a way to clear up. The grenades did the trick and we went in. It was pretty dark in there so we had to switch on our night vision. The place has been abandoned for many years and in this darkness we had to find the entrance to the secret labs.
I must say it wasn’t easy. It took us about an hour, but soon we came across a chamber with some light.
- “We must be on the right track.” I said.
- “I wonder how they make their way through that darkness.” Jack said.
- “I doubt they do.” I said, “They must have an alternate method of getting here, perhaps some secret passage that we’re not aware of.”
- “Good point.” Jack said.
The chamber then led to a dimly lit with red light corridor. We made our way through it, then down the stairs until we came across a door.
- “All right, we better watch out for cameras here.” Jeffrey said.
We pushed the door open and went through it.

Chapter 9 – The abandoned research

Chloe was glad to see me home earlier than usual.
- “What happened?” She asked.
- “Nothing really. We failed to catch him again, but Rob tracked what he’s stolen, so they’re working on the stolen file. It should be a big day tomorrow.” I explained.
- “Oh, well you definitely be careful. I don’t want to lose you.”
- “You won’t lose me. I can promise you that.”
Here Chloe hugged me and I hugged her back. She really loved me and I knew it, so I didn’t want to hurt her one bit. Even though work is important, the loved ones will always be on the first place.
Chloe and I relaxed and spent some quality time together for the rest of the day. My mind still kept on going back to the mission, but I tried my best not to think of it.
I had to wear the mind deactivator again when I went to sleep. I definitely needed to save the thinking for the next day.
The next morning I woke up feeling quite refreshed. It was still a bit too early for work, so I stayed in bed with Chloe for a while.
When the time for work came I took my time getting ready and was looking forward to going there. Chloe kissed me goodbye and I left to work. I could see a worried look on her face, but I reassured her that everything will be all right.
When I reached my station I went straight to Dave’s office. He said that there will be a meeting very soon and told me where it will be. They must’ve worked something out I thought to myself. Dave handed me a little slip saying ‘alpha’ and told me not to worry about it yet but to keep it with myself. Jack and Rick greeted me and I told them what happened when they left yesterday. The meeting began very soon and a few agents collected in a small room where Dave and Rob were going to explain the situation.
- “You all must’ve heard about the robber.” David began, “Well he turned out to be after something very unusual. Rob will tell you briefly about the situation and then I will give you orders on what to do.”
We all listened in.
- “Rob you take it from here.” David said.
- “OK sir.” Rob said.
He then cleared his throat, took a deep breath and began explaining:
- “What we found last night was that the stolen file contained an abandoned research. This research was abandoned pretty much within the first year of humanity’s arrival on Venus. A few bright scientists were working on how to make Venus a better place for us and they were manufacturing some sort of medicines. They kept on experimenting the medicines on humans to see how they would work. The research must’ve been about something to make humans more durable and more effective at something. Unfortunately we do not have the complete research. We believe a lot of it was lost 14 years ago when the research came to a dead end. The original research was taking place in Dome #13. That dome used to be a huge lab facility back in 2107. Even though most of it is now populated there are still some lower levels that are not functional. However we believe the antagonists started a secret lab down there. The machines used for the experiments cannot be moved from place to place, so if they want to continue the experiments then Dome #13 is the only place that can happen.”
Rob finished here. Every agent had a puzzled look on their face. I was glad that they enlightened us on this. At this moment I had so many thoughts in my head that I almost got a headache. Here David began to speak:
- “I’ve assembled you all here because this mission is going to be difficult and I want you all to work as a team on this. Now, I gave you all slips. On it there’s a team that you will be in. OK, so Delta team I want to go with Rob and do more research through the database files. Find any files matching this one. We must find the rest of that research. Team Charlie will go to the upper levels of Dome #13 and try to evacuate the people from there. We don’t know what kind of things are in these secret labs, so we better stay on the safe side and get the civilians out of the way. Team Bravo will go with Team Alpha and will be awaiting orders. Team Alpha will infiltrate the lower levels and will try to find the labs. Once the way is clear team Bravo would move in. If we are to meet retaliation team Bravo would shoot to kill. So you all know your orders, now let’s move out.”
I went to see Jack and Rick. They too were part of alpha team.
- “Is anyone else coming with us?” Rick wondered.
- “I would think so.” I said, “Surely boss is not going to send three of us there alone.”
Here one agent walked up to us.
- “Team alpha?” he asked.
- “Yeah.” I replied.
- “Good. I think it’s gonna be just 4 of us.”
- “Jeffrey? You’re coming with us?” Jack got surprised.
Jeffrey was one of the best agents, in fact he was second best VENUS member in existence, even better than me. He was mostly taking a role of a sniper in his missions as he was very accurate at shooting and could easily take out a moving target that he saw on a horizon.
- “So, boss really wants this mission to succeed if he is sending the best agents.” I said.
- “Well of course.” Jeffrey agreed, “Alpha team will have the hardest job here. The whole mission is dependent on us. If we fail - all of them fail. We are the key link holding this whole chain together.”
Afterwards we got our gear and headed for our Spiflyer. Many spiflyers will be heading to Dome #13 today as teams Bravo and Charlie will have to get there too. We all were looking forward to the mission but at the same time were very nervous.

Chapter 8 – The stolen information

Our boss was very frustrated with our failure to catch a thief.
- “So you three elites could not catch an ordinary thief?!” he was shouting for the second day in a row.
- “He is not an ordinary thief, sir.” I said.
- “I know!” he exploded.
- “What shall we do, sir?” Jack asked.
- “At the moment Rob is trying to work out what was stolen. Once we find out what it was we will be able to plan our strategy.” David said.
- “I sense someone high up is behind this.” I said.
- “You might be right, but it is too risky to take any action right now. We have no evidence of anything.” David said.
- “I am going to catch him, sir.” I said, “I promise that.”
- “Well I’m sure you will, but we might be too late when that happens.” David said, “You guys are dismissed for today. Come back tomorrow so we can plan our strategy.”
- “I want to stay and find out what was stolen.” I said.
- “As you wish.” David said.
Rick and Jack went home, but I stayed. I went to Rob’s office. Rob was very good with computers and any technical things. He used to be a hacker back on Earth even though he was only 17 back then.
- “So any luck yet?” I asked him as me and David entered his office.
- “Not yet. They surely have a lot of data there. It might take another half an hour or so. I need to compare the data before the breach and after. Our machines can scan approximately 1.1 million files per minute.
- “Wow! That database does have a lot of files then.” I commented.
- “Good job, Rob. I will be back. Give me a call once you find what was stolen.” David said.
- “Yes sir.” Rob said.
David left the office. After few seconds of silence Rob asked me:
- “So, what was the guy like?”
- “He is very slick and extremely intelligent.” I answered, “It seems like he knows our every step.”
- “Well maybe he studied all our moves before he went into action.” Rob said.
- “What’re you trying to say?” I asked.
- “Well someone told him. Someone has access to all our files. It might be him, or might be someone he is working for.” Rob said.
- “That’s a good point.” I said, “We must find who it is.”
Here I sat down and began carefully thinking. I was retracing my thoughts back in time, trying to remember the first failed mission and today’s one. I didn’t even know what the guy’s face looked like.
At this moment Rob screamed:
- “Aha!”
- “What is it?” I quickly responded.
- “I think I got something.” Rob said.
He then quickly pressed on a button on his desk to contact David.
- “Yes?” David’s voice came.
- “I think I got it, sir.” Rob said.
- “Excellent, I’ll be there ASAP.” David said.
I came closer to the screen. Rob tracked the missing file and began trying to open it.
- “Can you open it?” I asked.
- “Yeah, just need a minute.” Rob said.
Rob began trying to hack his way into the file without damaging it. Even though the actual file was stolen, there was still a backup for everything in the database.
In a few seconds David entered the office.
- “So, what did you find?” David asked.
- “Just trying to open it.” Rob said, “And here we are.”
Rob opened the file. Three of us looked inside. It was a program of some sort that kept a huge record of some kind of lab work.
- “There is a lot of info here.” Rob said, “We will need to research through it in order to find out what this all is about.”
- “All right, I’ll tell a few more people to join you in the research.” David said, then turned to me and said, “Jim, you better go home and have some rest. If we find out what’s happening by tomorrow then you are my best hope and I want you to be ready.”
- “Yes sir.” I said.
- “Very well. See you tomorrow.”
I said goodbye to David and Rob and left the VENUS station. I was more than ready already for anything that will come up. Something huge is going to happen, I could feel it with every inch of my body. It’s time I get a sensible rest before my big mission.

Chapter 7 – Corner and snatch

It was extremely quiet in the data vault and relatively dark too.
- “Is there a light switch here?” Rick asked.
- “Even if there is I don’t think it would be wise to switch it on. We don’t want the robber to know we’re here.” I said.
- “He probably knows that we’re here anyway.” Jack said.
- “Maybe you’re right.” I agreed, “But still we better use our night vision equipment.”
- “All right.” Jack and Rick agreed.
We switched on our night vision within the crufacle and continued alone the corridor. There were entranceways into various large rooms full of electronic files. We just had to keep our eyes peeled in case we see something suspicious.
After about 5 minutes of creeping through the dark we couldn’t find anything. We stopped to catch our breath for a bit.
- “This is no use.” Jack said.
At this moment the robber jumped from behind us and hit me and Jack on the head. Both of us fell down. The robber then began running away. Rick chased after him. The robber then opened fire on him. He was using V submachine gun. Rick had no choice but to take cover. Jack and I quickly got up and ran in the direction the robber went.
- “I’m pinned down!” Rick shouted.
Here Jack and I joined the firefight and therefore robber stopped shooting and continued escaping as he knew that he was outnumbered.
- “Damn it! He was expecting us.” I got angry.
We chased him through the corridor, but suddenly Jack stopped.
- “Jack, come on there’s no time!” I shouted to him.
- “One second.” Jack said and pressed on a few buttons on the wall.
At this moment the way to the stairs got blocked with an energy shield.
- “Excellent thinking Jack.” I said and three of us continued running towards the robber.
However he was not fooled so easily. He quickly jumped upwards and grabbed onto the ceiling. I aimed at his legs and opened fire, but he managed to climb into a vent before my shotgun fire reached him.
- “Damn it, we are not as acrobatic as him. We won’t be able to climb into that vent. Jack disable the energy shield.” I ordered.
- “Of course.” Jack said and ran back to disable the shield.
- “Well?” I asked.
- “It’s not working!” Jack said.
- “This is NOT happening!” I got frustrated.
- “I think there’s another staircase.” Rick said.
- “Where?”
- “I think I saw it that way.” Rick pointed in a different direction.
- “All right team, let’s go. I don’t think he’s gone far.”
Three of us ran towards another staircase and ascended via it. I decided to contact our boss.
- “Sir, we lost the robber, but he’s still in the building. Can you detect him?”
5 seconds later an answer came from my boss:
- “He is virtually where you are right now.”
- “What?!” Jack and Rick couldn’t believe it.
I then looked down and there the robber burst out of the vent. He bashed me on the face with his gun and then ran towards the nearest door. Rick and Jack opened fire, but he slipped away again.
- “Go go go!” I shouted and three of us ran after the parasite.
I could see him literally in front of us. I shot without aiming much and got him right in the back. He collapsed onto the ground.
- “Jim, you got him.” Jack was delighted.
I still couldn’t believe that I did.
- “This must be a miracle.”
We approached his body.
- “Now let’s see what he’s stolen.” I said.
At this second I noticed a shockwave grenade lying beside him and it was activated.
- “Oh shit!” I screamed.
- “What?” Jack and Rick asked me.
- “Grenade!” I shouted and all three of us dived for cover.
The explosion was loud because we were so close to it. We then got up and looked back, but the robber’s body was gone.
- “Where did he go?” Jack got surprised.
- “Maybe the explosion ripped him to pieces.” Rick said.
- “I don’t think so.” I said without hesitation, “First of all there is no blood except for the one that came out from me shooting at him and secondly shockwave grenade is not that strong to disintegrate the body.”
- “So he disappeared then?” Jack got surprised.
- “I cannot believe it. We almost had him there.” I got frustrated again.
- “Boss will not be happy.” Rick said.
- “Yeah well I’d like to see our boss try to catch him.” I said with anger.
- “What shall we do?” Jack said.
- “We don’t know which way he went.” I said, “I doubt we will catch him today. Let’s just go back to our Spyflier.”
Three of us slowly walked back to our Spyflier. I was not happy at all. This is the first time ever I failed two missions in a row. In fact I am not used to failure. I usually think things out carefully and therefore my plans tend to work all the time. This guy must be extremely clever. I wonder whom he is working for.

Chapter 6 – A new mission

I woke up in time on the next day. I had a good breakfast, kissed Chloe goodbye and took off to work. My mind was refreshed and so I was ready to think logically once again.
When I got to my station I’ve heard that another breach has happened. No-one knew whether it was the same guy or not, but I was sure that it’s the same guy. I quickly headed for my boss’ office and confronted him there. I promised him that I won’t underestimate this robber this time and he briefed us on the mission.
Apparently this time the breach was in one of the information sections of Dome #16. Me and my teammates loaded up and were ready to go. Our boss said that the robber will be much more useful if we capture him than kill him.
- “So do you think it’s the same guy again?” Rick asked me.
- “I’m almost positive it’s him.” I replied.
- “Well in that case we better watch out for his every move. That guy is really crafty.” Jack said.
- “Yes he is, but we will still catch him… tonight.” I said boldly.
- “If you say so.” Rick said.
Three of us sat into our Spyflier again and Alan took us to Dome #16. It took about 20 minutes to fly there. These spyfliers are really fast compared to all the other flying vehicles. I remember back in the day when we first arrived on Venus the flights from Dome to Dome were taking hours. It’s good that technology is improving so fast, but our guy has a digging means of travel and this way we cannot predict where he’s going to attack next. We needed to succeed this time.
So we got off by one of the entrances to Dome #16. That was the entrance that was closest to the information subsection of this Dome. Jack, Rick and I went in and compressed our crufacles.
- “OK then, let’s go and catch our guy.” Jack said with high spirit.
Three of us came across a few members of staff. They were not aware of where the robber might be, but they believed it’s somewhere in the lower levels. Three of us proceeded downstairs. There were lots of rooms full of computers. I personally thought the robber would be somewhere in the data vault, as there’s hardly any staff down there. But still he could be masking himself as a staff member around here, so I was studying every person we came across to notice any suspicious activity. He was wearing a ninja-type mask last time and so we didn’t know what his face looked like.
This floor seemed clear and we descended to the next floor. At this moment I received a radio message from our boss.
- “Jim, we’ve established a radar link with your location. The robber is still there. There seems to be a lonely target in the lower levels. Our detectors say that you’re very close to it. Be careful and do not fail me again.”
- “Yes sir.” I said and my team proceeded.
There were virtually no staff members down here. I was hoping that the target our boss was talking about is the robber.
After long search on this floor we found nothing. Now we found the stairs to the data vault. As soon as we descended there I could pretty much feel the robber’s presence. I didn’t have any equipment to detect him, neither could I see him, but I had a very deep gut feeling that he was there.

Chapter 5 – Worried

My home dome was 36f, i.e. it was inside dome #36 and branchpoint f. That’s pretty much how we used addresses here on Venus, we would state a dome and then the branchpoint. Some domes have only about 10 branchpoints while others can have up to 90. This one was a relatively small dome as it was a residential dome where people lived, so it didn’t have many branchpoints. We have 25 original big domes that were built in the first year or so of our arrival on Venus and about 60 or so smaller residential domes. It seems little, but you’ll be surprised how little of the total Earth population actually survived since the whole incidence on Earth.
Chloe was sleeping when I arrived. I therefore decided not to wake her up and went to the kitchen to get myself some dinner. I was still thinking intensively about today’s mission. I wanted to figure out who was that robber, whom was he working for and what was he after. The thoughts gave me a headache and I couldn’t concentrate on cooking. At this moment my sweet Chloe walked into the kitchen.
- “You’re back, finally.” She said as she entered.
- “Hey darling. Unfortunately today’s mission was a failure, so we had to see our boss afterwards. Sorry about that.” I explained.
- “Why? What happened?” Chloe was interested.
- “We underestimated a robber. He was much more slick than we imagined.”
- “Well I’m sure you’ll catch him very soon. You’re the best V.E.N.U.S. member.”
- “3rd best actually.” I corrected her.
- “Oh come on, I’m sure you’re better than those two champions. They just got lucky. But you know, your time will also come.” Chloe said sweetly.
- “I thought my time has gone past already.”
- “Well I know that you’re destined for something big. You’re a very clever and capable guy.”
- “Thanks darling. I hope you’re right, but I’m not doing it for popularity. I’m doing it because I like order and security.” I said.
She didn’t say anything else, she just came up to me and kissed me.
- “Need help with cooking?” she asked, “You look tired. Let me help you.”
- “All right.” I decided not to stop her.
We had a nice dinner, watched a movie and then went to bed. It was a long while since movies were being made. Since the whole incident on Earth and arrival on Venus no-one got a chance to make movies, but as the life on Venus is getting more stable people can afford now to make movies and so we hope that this year the movie industry will continue to exist.
Once in bed I told Chloe that I’ve got to get up early so I could go to work and work out how to catch that thief. She was getting worried about me and tried to calm me, but it was so hard to let go of all the thoughts. She suggested for me to sleep in ‘Mind-B2 deactivator’. It’s a special kind of head gear that allows you to relax and to let go of every thought that is in your head at that moment. As long as you wear it you will be relaxed. And despite so many mechanical and electronic things inside it, it was still very comfy to wear. The B1 and B2 models are far safer than the A models that used to exist about 5 years ago. With A models prolonged wearing of mind deactivator could actually cause severe brain damage and in some rare cases even schizophrenia. The A models are not on the market anymore.
But mind deactivators are really effective and as soon as I put it on I switched off automatically and that helped me get enough sleep for the next day.

Chapter 4 – Gone

The elevator was moving down smoothly and not too fast. I was looking for a lid that will be on elevator’s roof that will allow me to enter it. Time was running out. I found it successfully. It was jammed a bit as it was not used before. I quickly scraped the rust off with my gun and attempted to open the lid again. It opened. I jumped inside and pointed my gun at a thief. He was wearing a mask on his face so I couldn’t tell what he looked like.
- “Don’t move or I’ll shoot!” I warned him.
He listened to my command.
- “Now turn around and get down on your knees.” I continued.
He did that too and then said:
- “You’re making a big mistake.”
- “Why is that?” I asked.
At this moment the elevator stopped sharply as it reached the bottom floor. That got my attention. The robber seemed to know all the combat strategies, because as soon as that happened he got up instantaneously and pounced on me. I shot from my weapon, but he managed to knock it to the side in time.
The elevator door opened here. The robber punched me in the face and then ran out of the elevator door. I followed him out and then aimed my shotgun at him. I shot, but he managed to run past a turn in the corridor, so I missed.
- “This is not happening!” I got frustrated.
I then ran after him as fast as I could. The corridor had many turns in it and therefore it was difficult to see the thief, but I knew for sure that he was directly in front of me somewhere.
We finally ran out into a lobby on the ground floor. I saw Jack and Rick coming out of one of other corridors. They opened fire on the robber, but he was too slick and was taking cover in time.
A couple of staff members saw the chase and decided to help us. Both of them took tazers out and ran towards the robber. The robber aimed his V pistol at them and shot both of them down with a single shot each.
I was getting angrier and angrier. I got my V pistol out and began shooting in robber’s direction crazily and managed to get him in left shoulder. That didn’t stop him though. I needed to reload here and so did Jack and Rick. The robber then decompressed his crufacle and ran out of the front entrance.
Me and my two team-mates decompressed ours as well and followed the robber out. It was too late by that stage. He got into a Crawler-9, a type of underground digging vehicles and disappeared underground. These digging vehicles were very rare and usually cost a lot. Crawler-9 was the latest model and therefore was much more efficient than the other 8. I was surprised that an ordinary robber owned a vehicle like that. This made me think that someone more high-up was behind all this.
- “Alan, we’re coming back.” I said via the radio.
- “Sure, I’m already waiting for ya.” Alan’s voice came from the radio.
Me and two of my team-mates went back to the Spiflyer and flew back to our base.
David told three of us off. He was saying:
- “So you’re saying that three of you professionals could not capture one robber?!”
- “He was too slick.” Jack said.
- “And he was also good at combat.” I added.
- “I don’t want to hear excuses.” David said, “You failed your mission and that’s it.”
- “We’ll get him next time.” I said.
- “What makes you think that there will be a next time?” David asked.
- “Sir, he owned a Crawler-9 vehicle. I doubt that it was a single robbery. I think that he works for someone high-up.” I explained.
- “Stop telling fairy tales.” David said.
- “Sir, this is true. I don’t think that a single robber would have enough money to buy one of those.” Jack backed me up.
- “All right. I don’t want any more excuses. Call it a day for now and tomorrow we will try to find out what was he after.” David said.
I was severely tired that day. I went back to my home dome to my beloved girlfriend Chloe.