Steel eye Exoskeletons has a very quick reaction time, significantly faster than nerve impulses, which in a human/ drev body are relatively the same reacting at about 300 mph or 400 km/h. The goal of the SE armor is to take nerve impulses directly from the brain and shoot them through the system at speeds faster than that average, while simultaneously disrupting the delayed signal. The result, is an unbelievably fast reaction time (within reason so as not to break bone), When the SE exoskeleton is paired with SE armor, the two share and exchange information at an incredible speed.
Pairing a human's startle response, with a fully equipped combat ready SE armor suit and weaponized combat AI, and the result is startling. Almost as soon as the voice spoke, fifteen weapons were raised into the ai. The last one to move was Sunny herself, augmented only by a combat AI and the strength of a Combat suit, made by the company that makes the SE suits.
Inside Adam's head Fealty had already pinpointed the source of the sound, and his mechanical eye had already switched to thermal readings. With one eye seeing normally, and the other eye seeing in thermal, Adam experienced an odd sensation as his brain automatically overlayed the two types of vision, giving him some strange hybrid version of the world.
And what he saw, was that they weren't alone.
The.
Thing, sat hunched above them in the room's rafters, hardly anything more than a black mass. It was only slightly warmer than the surrounding room, making it difficult to see even in the thermal array. Either way Fealty had already done its best to outline the figure in orange. Fealty was more than 80% sure this thing was a hostile, and the only reason it hadn't urged and attack was that the creature had not yet made a move, and Adam, much to fealty's annoyance, had implemented a policy of diplomacy before violence.
It was one of the only things they disagreed on.
"Oh they did." The voice said again, and Adam watched as it shifted on its perch. From what he could tell of the figure, he was almost positive it was Kree, one of the winged ones. "But by the time they knew what was happening there was nothing they could do, no one to call."
Adam circled the Kree slowly weapon held at the ready, while the others held back, their weapons raised but not ready to fire.
"Why don't you show yourself, and we can talk like civilized people."
The voice chirped a few times, almost like laughter, "If that is what you want."
And then the body fell, and the entire room jumped back as the kree landed on the floor, its body visible now in the collective beam of their tac-lights which cast the creature into otherworldly contrast. It hunched at the center of the circle, a deformed, lopsided thing, that hopped over the ground twitching and jerking in a way that could do nothing but trigger the immediate fight or flight response of the watching humans.
But they all held their line, unmoving.
Adam drew himself up and stepped forward lowering his weapon but not outright ready to relax, "Look me in the eyes."
"If you insist." He watched the creature as it lifted its head, long bald neck arching sliwly upwards, onyx skin glistening in the pool of light.
It lifted its head, beak-like face turning towards him to reveal, glowing orange red eyes, and a lattice of pulsing orange veins pulsing up the left side of it's neck and face.
"Void sickness." Someone said
There was a murmur of nervousness around the room, and one or two shuffled half a step back, though, despite their instincts, they still held their round. Adam held up a calming hand to them. He didn't blame them for their reaction. They were all inoculated against the void sickness, courtesy of Glados's donated and cloned adapted DNA, but still that didn't mean they were entirely safe, and no one wanted to be infected.
Of the group here only Sunny and Adam were guaranteed safe, only because they were already infected.
Even as he thought, Adam could feel the subtle pulsing beginning up around his mechanical eye. Anyone looking at him in a dark room might have been able to pinpoint the subtle light burning out from inside his veins where the void resided.
"Is that what happened here. Void plague?"
The Kree chuckled "Yes, the void plague. It began with my return...." The creature sighed still hunched at the center of the room, its large wins pulled up around itself like a cloak, "It all began with me, though I didn't know it at the time." The creature lowered its head, "It was providence that brought me to Kazna's feet, my own exile and a love for power and wealth" It shifted and its feathers rustled over the ground in a dry whisper.
"Me, Hunt, some Tesraki, and others."
"I KNEW IT!" Adam shouted. Realizing only a few seconds alter that he interrupted and should probably quiet down.
The Kree gave him a glare but continued, "She promised us power, dominion over worlds she said, and to give her credit, she wasn't wrong. Hunt was given Earth after all, taken right from the hands of that Kelly."
Inside Adam felt his blood boiling. He imagined steam coming out of his own pores.
"She promised me this world too, and I waited patiently . I was ordered to go back , to prepare the way for my own empire, and so I did. Little did I know, at that time that I was carrying with me what would be the downfall of my people. It began as any other sickness might, I will spare you the details, as you of all people must understand. But thousands upon thousands laid up in their beds fighting for the sanctity of their souls. Some of them managed to make it through, others fell away into darkness. Those that survived did not last long, as came the swarm of those that did not. They died by the thousands, and then dwindled slowly." He lifted his wings to reveal his emaciated body, sweeping his fathers around the room like a showman introducing his stage, "The government atop this mountain held the line for months, they had protective measures in place, killed anyone on sight who might be infected but after many months of fighting, it could not last. They fell in the night, raised to ruin here atop this mountain, and those eggs you hold with you are all that remain."
Adam had stopped his pacing and was now simply staring t the creature before him, hunched in the near darkness. It raised its wings again, 'And here am I, ruler of a dying world, just as I was promised." He chirped again a few more times, bitterly to himself as he lapsed into silence hunched against the stone, "Even now she harvests the energy from my people growing stronger every day on their fear and their darkness."
"Your greed destroyed your entire species." Adam said softly.
The Kree slumped, but did not argue with the assessment.
Adam was right, and there was no denying that fact.
"Perhaps..... not entirely destroyed." The Kree turned its head eyeing Adam's armor, and the interior pockets that contained the eggs.
Adam tightened his grip on his weapon, "I don't know. What if this is a trap, what if the eggs are infected by the void and this is simply a ploy to get at arcadia. I could go and chuck these eggs off a cliff right now and I doubt anyone would blame my logic."
He watched the Kree carefully, watched its feathers tremble upon hearing him say that.
"You could, certainly." The Kree lifted its head, glowing red eyes locked on Adam.
"But, I know you will not." It took a step forward and the SE soldiers behind him did the same raising their weapons very slightly. Adam held up a hand to stop them, taking his own step forward. He loomed over the Kree by a good foot and a half, but the creature did not seem to mind, "I know you will not because, unlike her, you believe in the sanctity of life. If there is so much of a chance that those eggs are not infected, you will find a way to preserve them."
Adam said nothing, but the entire room knew the kree was right.
He didn't mind that the Kree knew.
If evil knew him as a merciful man who valued the sanctity of life, than he was proud to wear that banner, even if it would be considered a tactical weakness.
"And what do you want? Do you want them to live?"
"When I started out on this road, I hated my brethren for my exile, but I didn't want the extinction of my entire race."
Adam nodded once.
The Kree tilted it's head, "You should go..... they're coming."
Just then a line of static crackled over their line. Maverick/ Noble 3 curse, "Shit, sir Valkyrie team is reporting incoming hostiles."
"How many." Adam demanded
"Maybe thousands." Maverick said grimly.
"Alright Noble, take point, slayer and terminator teams at our backs, lets move!"
The teams began to file out of the room, and Adam kept one eye over his shoulder, allowing Fealty to track the Kree as he grew small in the distance behind them standing in the doorway unmoving. He kept that eye contact with the Kree until the last moment before they turned a corner, and stone blocked his view.
He ordered Fealty to keep tabs on their rear, not trusting the Kree not to try something rash, but after that his mind was on what was a head.
Gunshots could be hard in the distance, and in moments they had burst out into red mist and sunlight to find Valkyrie team standing in the courtyard engaged in full scale battle. It was hard to see anything in the mist, and for the first few moments, Adam couldn't tell what they were shooting at. And then he watched as a swarm of black shapes dived down from the sky initiating a frenzied moment of gunfire. Feathers exploded into the air and bodies hit the ground hard. One of the dark feathery shapes plowed into Valkyrie 2 knocking her to the ground. Her rifle was too long to use in such close space, so she brought her fist up and punched the kree in the head.
It dropped to the ground dead even as Valkyrie 2 scrambled to her feet. Adam joined the fray ordering the group to move towards the shuttles.
They clustered together in a circle paired up in teams of two to guard each other's backs. Overhead the red sky burned, and the light of the sun broke through as a burning orange nimbus in the sky above, casting the land below into a bloody red sheen. Red mist rolled in and Adam's visor was coated with droplets of red, which ran down the front of his face mask and into the creases of his armor.
A kree shot at him from the billowing cloud, and Adam gunned it down into the stone at his feet.
More shrieks came from the sky, warbling and chittering .
He kept his thermal vision on, tracking the movement through the mist.
What he saw was purely horrific. Thousands upon thousands of bodies swarmed the sky above him in a wheeling vortex that was only growing. In his armor storage, he held what remained of the kree species, and overhead the maddened parents strove to prevent their own progeny's survival.
Another two figures dove at Adam and he shot them down. One managed to break through and grab at Sunny who speared it through the chest. Another went for Noble 4 but Adam plucked it out of the sky and slammed it to he ground with one hand with a force so powerful stone cracked. He left the body lying twitching on the bloody crusted stone and roared a retreat.
The group did as told, racing towards the shuttles though they kept in tight formation.
"Noble 3." He shouted over his Comms , "You're with me." Maverick fell back to join him, switching places seamlessly with Sunny who, while she didn't like the idea, knew Adam had his reasons.
He motioned her forward towards the shuttle, and she took command of his team while he fell back.
"Slayer 2 take Noble's shuttle controls. Terminator 5 and Valkyrie 3 you're with me."
They all did as ordered, without question, running to fulfill the commands. Overhead the sky was almost black with wings. If they didn't move quickly this wasn't going to turn out.
The others were already forcing their way into the shuttles. Adam kept the others back to hold the billowing sky overhead at bay. The air was filled with the sound of screeching, thousands of voices all together lifting up in a whirling howl that was only increasing with every moment they delayed.
"Shut shuttles," he ordered
He gave them credit, that there was only a moment of hesitation.
He raised his voice, ready to explain himself as the shuttles began to take flight, lifting off the ground and towards the heavens. Doors on the sides of the shuttles slid open, and the door gunners took their positions, holding the massive energy-coil machine guns into place with loud thuds. Barrels rotated, their sound lost over the roaring of shuttle engines.
Adam saw a burst of white light as gunfire began.
"We need to hold the line back."
The group before him nodded, slowly beginning to realize why he had picked them.
"Everyone engage j-"
And then something hit him hard.
It was like being bodied by a cannonball right to the gut. Despite his increased size and strength, his feet left the ground and he was flung bodily backward arms and legs flailing. He watched as the ground passed underneath him, legs and arms kicking and pinwheeling in shock and horror as the ground vanished. Gravity took hold, and Adam plunged downward over the edge of the cliff.