The Legion

The night air was biting through the canvas as I laid concealed in my rooftop vantage point, overlooking the area of operation. My role on this mission was to provide recon for an assault team. Their mission was to subdue an old-world Ministry threat, a threat that had been reported by Union security officials.

The Lord Regent of Kent believed this area of the old city housed a Tomb which would no doubt be full of old-world tech, or could have been something far worse.

I flipped through holo-screens on my notepad reading the dossier of each of the assault members.These guys were Union soldiers through and through, some of them for more than one lifetime. The team consisted of a main platoon, three additional heavy weapons squads and three snipers duos. In total there were nearly sixty men on this job.

I couldn't help the thoughts creeping into my mind ‘what the hell's so dangerous that they need me and six snipers to overwatch some old apartment in the deep underground of the old city ruins?’

I'd tangled with Ministry remnants in the past; they were underhanded and callous when it came to fighting, though they were never so dangerous that so many men were deployed.

"Movement in the square below." My ear rang with the voice of one of the snipers.

I scanned the area, the ancient roads, rundown buildings, and crumbling concrete. Hundreds of feet above me the colossal girdered underbelly of New Kent loomed. Somewhere up there, six of the Unions most lethal killing machines were watching.

Lucky for me, they were on my side.

Down below was a large courtyard of ruined structures, old-world cars, trams, and what looked to be a hotdog cart littering the streets, all left to rot when the city was rebuilt after the last war.

The sights of the old world always made me feel uneasy. It was eerie to look into another world that was just below my feet which most don't even remember existed.

On the far side of the square, the assault squads were setting charges on the lone structure in the center.

The building was a six-story highrise that seemed out of place like it was placed here deliberately to stand out. The longer I looked at it, the more wrong it seemed; each floor was a single room and there were no stairwells or access between floors. Each room was empty like a void. At the thought, my skin started to crawl.

I swallowed hard. The Ministry set traps to protect anything important, sometimes going so far as to destroy the Tomb if it were breached by non-Ministry personnel.

Something was off… "Recon to Assault team, have you scanned the building for signs of life? Over."

"Affirmative, Recon, one Cryo-casket on the subfloor of this building. No signs of other activity. Do we proceed? Over."

Only one? All the other tombs that I'd seen had a minimum of six operators guarding them; just one casket violated known Ministry protocols. This was not right.

A voice crackled over the comms channel, "All units prepare for impact. Charges set?"

"Set sir!"

"On my mark. Three, two... Mark!"

Thuump!

A shockwave rolled out with a large cloud of dust as the structure shook from the breaching charges.

Crack!

Seconds later the building splintered, imploded, and crumbled to powder and detritus. All six floors were gone.

"Sir, this building was not reinforced concrete, it appears to be compressed silica. It was a fake. There’s nothing here."

A rifleman near the perimeter of the building called out in confusion as he approached the rubble pile.

I was right; this was all wrong. The Ministry had never used decoys in the past. Somehow, the lone cryo-casket had signs of life within.

What the hell's going on in there? Was this deliberate, even planned? Where were the traps?

Beep beep

The communications devices of every man in the courtyard signalled simultaneously.

Radiation?

What!? How?

Was the entire area a trap? No, it was something else.

"Energy spike from the center of the rubble!"

My scope switched to thermal imaging. In the center of the ruined building, a single silhouette of a man showed. His chest was lit up white as if I were staring at a small star.

CONTACT!

I looked away from my scope as the dust started to settle.

A man crawled out of the sand and dust of the collapsed building. His skin was pallid, his body looked frail and his hair hung in thin ropes to his knees. The man stood motionless for a moment with blank eyes.

The moment I looked at him I felt sick. My skin crawled and every fibre of my being screamed to run.

Adrenaline rushed through me. My instincts shrieked that I was in danger. I felt in my soul that I could die from just one look.

This man was not normal. His eyes regained colour slowly as he straightened his back and rolled his shoulders. The bones in his chest could be seen through his skin, glowing faintly orange.

In the center of his torso, a large projection of a lion's head shone through his skin from the increasingly bright light that seemed to occupy where his heart should be.

"Have I been sent a welcome from the Union? Thank you for this meal." The man said as he bowed his head.

The radio channel crackled to life as Geiger counters began to chirp.

"Target is to be terminated AT ALL COSTS! OPEN FIRE!!!"

Then it began.

Tracer rounds poured into the square from the lead team. A hail of heavy machine-gun fire and grenade rounds came from flanking heavy squads. Heavy impacts of sniper fire landed on target

A war erupted before my eyes. The radiation was still rising, almost faster than the disrupted dust.

The light poured through the figure’s ribs as he moved forward, walking at a casual pace, ignoring the bullets flying at him from every angle. He arrived at the closest rifleman and stabbed his hand into the poor man’s chest.

The sight that followed still haunts me.

The rifleman seemed to melt. Armour, weapon, skin, and bone, like he had dissolved. And the light in the old man’s chest grew brighter.

I scrambled to grab my binoculars; I could see the change in him as I focused. The target seemed to steam as his skin became more whole and looked healthier, even as bullets slammed into him.

When a bullet impacted his body, for a fraction of a second the skin burned black but soon changed back to his now healthy tone. Almost like armour formed and melted back into him.

He then turned as the bullets stopped. The guns were empty. And were reloading.

"My turn!" He laughed.

In the blink of an eye, the area illuminated as bright as day and he seemed to appear next to each of the members of the assault squad and repeat the process of melting them into a black-green fluid that he would consume. Each time he consumed one of them, he got faster and would shine brighter.

I was witnessing hell.

This man was a demon.

Without realizing it, I was drenched in sweat. In the time It took the heavy guns to reload, he was half-finished in his one-sided massacre of the assault squad.

The gunmen started another salvo. This time he raised a hand and the stream of bullets seemed to disappear.

From his other hand, a black spike slowly slid out of his palm. Once it grew to about a meter in length he made another, and another.

Till he had about twenty-one.

The squad leader shouted over comms, "All surviving elements retreat enemy has been identified as Ministry android, designation Legion. I will buy time for retreat."

Legion!?

He’s one man? Why’s he called Legion? And why isn’t he in the Union database? I flipped my notepad to Ministry records my hands shaking as I searched Legion and the man’s face appeared.

I vomited. The radiation was taking its toll on me even from here.

Ministry records showed his dossier;

Legion, berserker class combat frame.

AI Counterpart; Sampson

This operator is unstable and requires calories to maintain. He is equipped with absorbent enzymes that he can deploy from his hands to breakdown and feed on enemies absorbing all materials to supplement the massive amount of energy he requires to activate Sampson's strength.

Once active, Sampson will calculate defensive strategies to prevent damage to his body, as well as push his entire body into overdrive. Speed and strength will become beyond all other models.

A drawback of using Sampson is he will burn out nanobodies at an alarming rate and the body will wither and die. If you encounter a hostile Legion unit: Avoid and outlast. Failure to do so will mean annihilation.

Legion smiled as the 21st black spike slid free from his palm to join the others in the ground at his side.

In a blur of speed, he hurled spears into the air and straight into the heavy gunfire.

The guns fell silent and the dust settled. Every spear had hit its mark. Hundreds of meters. Each of them impacted and killed a member of the heavy gunners and the additional 6 disappeared into the sky.

I heard 6 impacts in the city substructures above me. He had killed the hidden sniper teams as well. Not even I had known their exact locations.

An unbeatable warrior.

I froze.

I could feel my body shutting down in fear; we would all die and we had released this monster below one of the most populated cities in the region.

Like a flash, he ripped through the rest of the squad members and burned bright as he absorbed the last man.

I was alone with a monster.

"Recon unit, come here."

This voice belonged to the captain of the assault squad…

Legion jumped ten stories in a single bound as he landed on the rooftop where I was posted.

I pissed myself. I was shaking and could feel the absurd amount of heat coming from his steaming body. But he didn’t attack.

He spoke slowly with a voice that seemed to echo with thousands of voices.

"I want you to report what you saw to your Union masters, and tell them that God has come to judge their sins."

He chuckled as the light within him dimmed.

I could see it as he walked. He burned the concrete black with his bare feet. Ashes flaked off of his skin as his muscles shrank and his back began to hunch.

His hair seemed to grow shorter and became a cloak of thousands of fine strands woven together on his body.

I sat bewildered and fearful as I saw him age into an old man and form clothes on his back as he slowly wandered away.

The unbeatable warrior had become completely unrecognizable as the light went out and I was left alone in the infinite black of the ruined city.

…

"That's when you blacked out?"

Yes sir.

"Very good. Thank you for your service. You may terminate yourself if you feel the need. I'll have another mission for you when you wake up."

Yes sir.

Bang

"So Legion's finally reared his ugly head."