The Greenwood Building was a towering mass of glass and metal. Unlike most skyscrapers, it was circular, and twisted like a corkscrew as it rose into the foggy black. It took up nearly the entire center of Greenwood Plaza, but had a little park that surrounded it on all sides. The building had been the headquarters for the government's xeno-research department in Denver, boasting advanced labs below and hundreds of offices above.

Greenwood had survived the war shockingly intact, with most of the windows remaining unbroken. Unfortunately for us, it seemed like there had been some sort of lockdown triggered during the invasion of Denver, so the doors were barred with metal shutters roughly six inches thick. On the bright side, that meant that there probably weren’t any Assimilators in there. On the not as bright side, that meant we needed to find an alternate way in.

The drones dutifully started their search, looking for a window that didn’t have glass in it. A surprisingly tall order, because it seemed like the entire damn building had used a shatter resistant material for the windows.

While Camille did her drone thing, I sat down and leaned my back up against one of the doors. I slipped my helmet off and placed it lightly next to me, my communicator still in my ear, and tilted my head up to look at the sky. It was gorgeous without the night vision. There wasn’t a moon tonight, we’d made sure of that. Light pollution was a thing of better days, so the view was beautiful. A field of stars, broken only by the black masses of the Denver skyline.

There was a rustle as Allie sat down next to me, taking her helmet off as well. I always forgot how delicate her features were; the way she talked and the way she acted masked them so well that I always thought of her as larger than she was in reality. Her short brown hair was tied up in a bob of some sort, and her breath came out in soft puffs of fog in the cold fall evening. The rest of the squad were standing guard, so we sat in a comfortable silence for a while, until she started to speak softly.

“I was an environmental lawyer before all this, you know, so a sky like this was the dream. Nobody really gave a shit about what I did, though. Hard to care about how the factories were wrecking our rivers when there’s a horde of monsters trying to kill us all, right?” Her tone was self-mocking as she continued, “I dunno. I always thought I was so forward thinking. To me, it wasn’t even a question that we’d win. It was like that for a lot of my friends, too distracted by the fucking propaganda to see the writing on the walls. It’s not like we didn’t know, deep down, that we were fucked. We just chose to ignore it. I figured that when we won, people would be thanking me for keeping everyone accountable, for making sure we didn’t destroy the planet instead of the aliens.”

We were quiet again for a while. There was a little breeze, but nothing else moved in the city, and nothing else made a sound except for our breathing.

“I was such a fucking idiot, so goddamn selfish. I wasted my life on something that didn’t matter at all. I wish I’d spent it better. I wish I’d learned how to really help instead of going after noble, pie-in-the-sky bullshit. I mean, look at you. You came up with those fabricators, you came up with all that stuff that actually made a difference. I stuck my head in the sand,” she said bitterly, “And you’re still trying to save everyone while I play mercenary. Sticking my head in the goddamned sand, while people are getting killed or turned into… whatever the hell was back there.”

I considered my reply for a minute. “I think you’re being a little hard on yourself… everyone back then was short sighted. Nobody looked at the big picture like you did. Even if you were wrong, so was the rest of the world,” I laughed hollowly, “and it’s not like anything I did really helped in the end either. Everyone called me a genius, said I’d be remembered as a hero once we won. And guess what? We lost.”

I sighed and shook my head, “I’m not so great as you’re making me out to be, you know. The world ended, and for seven months I just wallowed around, doing jack shit. I had access to everything I do now, and I was still too much of a fucking coward to do anything. Only reason I changed was seeing that team die firsthand. How disgusting is that? Couldn’t get over myself until I’d already let someone die because of me.

“I mean, even now, look at me. I’m a Paladin. Got all this special training, all this equipment, these grand ideals. One of my titles is, I shit you not, ‘The Shield of Humanity.’ How fucking melodramatic is that?” That got a little smirk out of her, “But we’re in the same place right now, on the same mission. And I’ve got my training, my superhuman speed and reaction time to lean on. You’re a damn sight braver than I am, coming out to this god-forsaken city with none of that. What I’m trying to say is that at the end of the day, doesn’t matter what we did, it matters what we’re doing.”

I cradled my helmet under my left arm and pushed myself off the ground. I reached out a hand to Allie. “So the best we can do is keep on going, right?”

She gave me a grin and picked up her helmet, then grabbed my hand and pulled herself up. She wagged a finger at me, “Careful with all the smooth talking now, you’ve already got one of us mooning over you like a dumbass. Wouldn’t want another, now would you? Love triangles are a bitch.”

“Yeah, no. I’ve got a funny feeling I’m not your type,” I said, and reflected internally about how right she was about her last statement.

Allie snickered at me, “You’ve got that right.” She slid on her helmet and it locked into place with a click. Allie walked past me, slapping me on the back a little, “You’re not half bad at pep talks for being such an emotional brick.”

“I’m not a brick,” I muttered to myself as I put my own helmet back on.

“Yes, you are,” said Rebecca and Camille in tandem, over two separate channels.

“Shut up. And stop listening in on private conversations,” I didn’t bother restricting my voice because it equally applied to both parties.

I spoke to just Camille next, “Have you found anything yet?”

“Maybe. There’s a hole torn through, looks like a railgun impact, about sixty feet to the north. But it’s three stories up,” she replied.

“I’ve got equipment for that. We’ll head over there; can you do any recon inside?”

“Already started to. Looks clear so far.”

“Okay, keep me updated.” I switched back to the main channel, “Looks like Adelaide found an entrance point.”

“Finally. I’m definitely ready to get this over with,” groused Rebecca.

“I expect that type of whining from Jackson, not from you,” I said to her casually as we started to walk over, noting Jackson’s ‘fuck you!’ with satisfaction. I stopped at the mark on my CAS, and craned my head to look up. It was a little hard to tell from this angle, but I could see the hole she was talking about. The railgun slug must’ve hit something else before the building, because the opening wasn’t that big, maybe about six feet in diameter.

The squad gathered up behind me, and the four remaining drones expanded out in a semicircle behind us, keeping watch. I reached back and grabbed the multitool from where it was attached on the side of my hardened backpack. It detached silently, and with a thought I changed the tool to its grappling hook mode. The CAS mapped out the trajectory, all I had to do was point it in the right direction and fire. The ‘hook’, more like a pad that would adhere to things on a microscopic level, shot out with a pneumatic hiss and latched into place with a soft clunk, trailing a thin metal cable. I gave the cable a couple hard experimental tugs, then pulled the anchor out from the bottom of the multitool and stuck it into the ground at the base of the building. I placed one foot on either side of the cable, and let the tool pull me upwards like a cable car as I walked vertically on the side of the building.

When I reached the top, I ducked a little inside the gap, and found a good spot to crouch. I sent the multitool back down for the others to make their way up with. As they began their climb, I checked out the room we’d rappelled into. It appeared to be yet another office, which wasn’t that surprising considering how many of them were in here. This one wasn’t a private office though; it had a series of desks all around it and a large blank holoprojector on the wall.

Mary came up last, and we gathered inside the room. She handed me the multitool back. I checked my CAS as I stowed it. The vault was about seven stories under us, at the bottom of the labs. Thankfully, we had the layout to the Greenwood Building, unlike the collapsed one. Since it’d been a government facility, and an important one at that, the schematics and floor plan were in Camelot’s database. Besides, I'd worked here. I knew the place pretty well.

“How do you want to do this?” I asked Mary.

“Carefully. Doesn’t look like anything’s been in here, but if we could find a way in, so could the Assimilators. I’m not looking to get ambushed on the home stretch.”

I nodded, “Okay. We’re going to head to the closest flight of stairs. They’ll take us down to the lobby, but then there’s only one that goes below. It’s electronically locked, but this place had a small backup anti-matter power generator. We shouldn’t have any issues with it.” Another chorus of ‘ayes’ followed my statement. I was kind of digging this whole leading thing.

We started to move out, and a quick check of the hallway showed it was clear too. It was far less creepy than the last building we were in, and not just from the lack of corpses hanging from the ceiling, though that was a definite plus. The emergency lighting was still on, the backup generator still doing its job, which gave the place a less desolate feeling. The lights weren’t playing very nicely with the night vision though, which was really damn irritating. It was like they were sending bright lens flares across my HUD; not debilitating by any means, and the CAS did a pretty good job of filtering out their glow, but it was definitely distracting.

The center of the Greenwood building was gorgeous. From the lobby all the way to the skylight, the middle was completely open. I stood on the balcony and looked up, switching off my night vision for a moment. I could see the night sky. There were two main staircases that ran in a double helix around the inside of the empty space, immense sets of spiral stairs that appeared to be floating in the air. I saw the drone floating in the middle, and gave it a little wave. We started descending, taking each step one at a time. Despite my best efforts, I heard my footfalls echoing in the empty lobby. Everyone else’s were too, even Mary’s.

The ground floor of the building was two stories tall, an expansive space that was completely open, except for a ring around the outer perimeter that held elevators and some offices. In the center of the lobby was a forty-foot-high statue of the StarArc, its nose pointed upwards towards the sky. As we passed it, I laid a fond hand on the cold metal.

“Remember when I designed this thing?” I murmured to Camille.

She laughed softly, “You got so pissed at that artist they hired.”

“The dumbass got all the dimensions wrong. Why would you try to improve on perfection like that?” I drew my hand back. Happier times.

We moved on. The marble floor of the lobby was coated in a layer of dust and neglect. It looked like it’d been untouched since the invasion. The stairs to the basement were at the very northernmost point of the building, through a set of doors that required high clearance to pass through. But something was off, because when I approached them, the doors were wide open. It didn’t look like they’d been ripped off their hinges, like you’d expect an Assimilator to do. They just looked like someone had forgot to close them. But that wasn’t possible; they closed automatically.

I stacked the squad up on a wall near the door, and contacted Adelaide, who was still hanging out with me.

“Can you look through the building specifications, try to figure out why the lab security doors would be open?”

“Sure, Sam. Give me one moment.” She jumped from my CAS back to Camelot, and I planned to use the time she was gone to double check my weapons and systems.

And then I heard a small scrabbling noise.

Apparently, Mary heard it too, because she snapped her weapon to firing position and faced towards the east in a flash. I followed after. The rest of the squad pulled their guns up, but seemed less sure of it. My blood pounded. I could still hear it, faint but definitely there, but I couldn’t see a thing in the shadowy lobby.

“Sam, I found the information you were looking for,” said Adelaide into my ear, and I nearly crapped myself. Once I got over my near heart attack, I focused on listening again, but the scrabbling had stopped. I exchanged glances with Mary.

“Hold on Adelaide,” I said, “We’ve got to check something. Can you bring the drone down here, and send it, carefully, to the spot I’m marking?”

The drone descended silently, and I watched with bated breath as it inched closer towards the area. The squad was crouched in a firing line, SMGs pointed towards the east.

“There’s nothing there,” said Adelaide finally.

I let out a breath, and looked at Mary, “What do you think?”

She took a moment to answer, “Rat, probably. Assimilator wouldn’t’ve gone quiet like that.”

“This mission is taking years off my life,” muttered Aaron.

“You’re telling me. Adelaide, why aren’t the doors closed?” I asked.

“It appears as though an emergency override can keep them open, or an emergency evacuation. I would assume that it was an emergency evacuation, and the lockdown was triggered after.”

“That’s not good. I was counting on nothing being able to get down there,” I said with a frown.

“The drones will not be able to perform effective reconnaissance below; the remote connection will be cut off that far underground,” said Adelaide, “and I will no longer be able to be in contact with you once you are below the third floor. The lab is heavily shielded.”

Well, Adelaide would be in contact, since she was riding in the suit, but Camille wouldn’t be. This was the riskiest part of the mission by far, but I couldn’t think of a way around it. We could’ve dragged a massive cable all the way down connected to some sort of communications device, but something long enough would’ve been too heavy and bulky to bring with us. Hacking into the building’s coms network was out too – the emergency power didn’t extend to that.

I bit my lip, “Let's stick to the original plan. We’ve still got to go down there, but we’re going to do it a lot more cautiously. Once we secure the tech, we’ll head up and wait on the third floor until we can get back in contact with you.” I looked around the squad, “Any objections?”

“I have an idea,” volunteered Jackson, “How about we leave a couple people up here to keep an eye out, and have them run down if the drones find anything?”

Mary responded to him, “That isn’t a bad suggestion, but it won’t quite work in this situation. There’s a massive risk in splitting the squad up like that. The CAS won’t work between the floors, so whoever stays here has no way of finding us down there, especially if we have to take an alternate route.”

Jackson nodded, and there were no further complaints, so we headed towards the stairs to the labs. I stood at the head and looked down, but the emergency lights were still glowing, and it was interfering with the night vision in a space as small as this. I sent a mental command to turn mine off, and suggested everyone do so as well, which they took me up on. It was much easier to see with it off, but it was a little eerie; everything looked like it was washed in a deep red.

This staircase was far less impressive than the ones in the lobby, your standard concrete stairwell that wound in a square spiral downwards. There was a landing at each floor with a set of doors that led further into the labs, but we ignored those. There wasn’t a need to go exploring. The doors were all open for evacuation, and I paused at the landing on the fifth floor to look down the hall.

Rebecca paused alongside me. “Everything alright, Caterpillar Man?”

I shook my head and kept walking, “My workshop was that way. Just a couple memories is all.” I glanced at her, “But thanks for the concern.”

“No problem,” she said quietly.

We reached the bottom and stacked up on each side of the open double doors. Once I got a nod back from everyone, I peeked around the corner with my SMG raised. The hallway was empty, so we began to shuffle through the lab. If I thought it was silent above, it was nothing compared to down here. On the surface, you could hear the sound of the wind, the creak of a building settling every once in a while. In this basement, there was nothing except for our footsteps, and the way they bounced around unsettled me so much that I felt like turning around and bolting straight back up the stairs.

I noticed the aftermath of the evacuation as we moved through. Most of the doors were thrown open, the insides of the workspaces had some things knocked out of place. The layout of this floor was different than the rest. The other labs were all arranged in a logical grid of offices and workspaces. This one had four main hallways perpendicular to each other that were connected by a circular hall in the middle, which ran around the vault. The vault was a large, heavily reinforced room that squatted in the center of the floor. It had two doors: One was a normal security door that led to entryway, where data or hardware would be submitted for archiving. The other was an incredibly strong, foot-thick monstrosity which rose from the floor to the ceiling. Needless to say, it required top level clearance to get past.

This time, we’d swept the entire floor, moving through each room individually. We didn’t want anything sneaking up on us when we were rooting around the vault, after all. I also left a little camera at the base of the stairs, something I brought along in my pack. Since it was on the same floor as us, it could stream video to me, let me know if anything was coming. The team hadn’t found any Assimilators, thank God, so we gathered up in the entryway of the vault. The security doors had been left open, but the main one was sealed tight. There was a pistol lying on the floor. Maybe one of the security guards had dropped it? I shook my head. This was no time to get distracted.

To open the vault, I had to stand on a little metal plate in front of it. A biometric scanner would go over my entire body, reading everything in it to confirm that I was me. Incredibly invasive, yes, but also very secure. Luckily, the vault was attached to a separate generator than the rest of the building, in case of tampering, so it wasn’t low on power.

I removed my helmet. The air in here was stale, and smelled like something I couldn’t quite nail down. I looked over my shoulder at the rest of the squad, fanned out behind me.

“Moment of truth,” I said, then stepped onto the plate. There was a soft hum as the scanner went to work. After a few tense moments, the massive door made a series of whirring sounds, and began to crack open, giving us a look inside.

“Well, that was anti-climactic,” said Rebecca as we stepped out of the vault about ten minutes later.

I gave her a quizzical look, my helmet still tucked under one arm, “What else were you expecting? Gold? Diamonds? The Arc of the Covenant? It’s a government lab for God’s sake.”

“I know exactly what she means, it was boring as fuck in there. It was just a bunch of servers and a few cubbies full of weird shit!” grumbled Allie, “I expected, I dunno, like Assimilator cadavers or something. Maybe a spaceship.”

Mary shrugged, “I’m just happy that we don’t have to carry anything up with us.”

Aaron nodded, “We’re lucky the scanner tech is just software, taking a drive with us is a lot easier than a lugging a big piece of hardware.” He glared at me, “Though I wasn’t under the impression we were here on a shopping spree.”

“Hey, whoa, it’s not like anybody was using those materials. Besides, some of that stuff could come in handy,” I said defensively. They had some seriously neat shit from the fallen spaceships. There was a type of metal that I think would be able to rapidly change shape, given some electrical impulses.

“Can we leave, please?” said Jackson, “I’m not psyched about staying here longer than we have to.”

“That’s one thing we can agree on, buddy,” I told him as I slipped my helmet on. The night vision mode switched on automatically; I’d set it to be the default setting when I reengaged the CAS. I was about to turn it off again when I saw something out of the corner of my eye, something that had been covered by the deep red emergency lights.

There were bloodstains all over the ceiling and walls.

But there were no bodies.