YF immediately ducked for cover behind a pillar. He curled forward to minimize exposure, holding the thermal guard of his gun against his forehead and pointed up to prevent himself from shooting one of the sectarians. When he decided that he was safe from enemy fire, he made a mental map of where he was relative to the black armored mercenaries to assess whether he could land a shot. He rose up to provide cover fire and check his position one more time, but the rain of bolts kept him from getting a clear line of sight. From the corner of his eye, YF could see Uwada and Mizuno shooting in the direction of the mercenaries but even after about one hundred rounds exchanged, the return fire did not cease. The sectarians must be horrible shots — it was enough for YF to give Uraga a grudging level of respect.

YF took advantage of a sudden lull in fire to advance toward the end of the room, crouching behind pillars as he did so. The armored man shooting toward Mizuno and Uwada turned his muzzle toward YF and began to shoot, forcing YF to remain behind the pillar. YF could see from the side that someone was shooting toward the attacker, and followed the stream of trailing bolt light to see that it was Mizuno. When the mercenary stopped firing, YF emerged from behind the pillar and held his gun up, lining up the sights until they were close enough before pulling the trigger. The shot struck the man in the neck when YF was aiming for the torso, dropping him over the rail and sending him crashing into the ground. YF’s shot was followed up with a stream of bolts from the sectarian side, which landed on two unfortunate mercenaries who dropped where they stood.

Uwada and Mizuno advanced as the rest of the mercenaries fell back through the slowly closing steel doors. YF could feel his heart beating quickly as he realized the door would be impossible to open if they didn’t stop it. He dashed back toward the catering carts, stopping just as he came up to the first one. All of the robed men who had carried them into the building were dead with multiple bolt holes burned through their bodies. YF forced himself to move, grabbing the first cart and shoving it down the center of the room toward the door. Mizuno caught it mid-roll and broke into a run as he pushed, finally inserting the cart between the closing doors. The sound of the cart being crushed let out a continuous, loud clacking sound before coming to a sudden halt, plunging the area into an eerie silence. YF, Uwada, Mizuno, and the other sectarians took turns looking at each other.

“Anyone who goes through is DOA,” one of the sectarians whispered.

“DOA?”

“Dead on arrival,” YF whispered.

The look on their faces grew grim.

“Who’s got an EMP?” asked YF, glancing at Mizuno.

“Won’t that disable our weapons too?” asked one of the sectarians.

Mizuno shook his head. “These walls will reflect the waves. So long as the ones that get through this opening don’t reach all of us, we should have less disabled guns than them once we get through.”

“Which means some of us will have dead weapons.”

Uwada tapped Mizuno’s arm. “Throw it through the opening.”

Mizuno grimaced as he unbuttoned a pouch on his jacket and pulled out an EMP grenade, pressing a button before it began to whir. He then tossed it through the door opening, motioning for everyone to get back along the wall.

Loud scrambles and shouts could be heard from the other side as the EMP burst. At that moment a sectarian arrived from the hallway carrying a large metal tow hook tied to a thick cable. YF only managed a second glimpse before Mizuno pulled him forward, guiding him over the crushed cart, and through the opening to the next room. As soon as Mizuno emerged on the other side he aimed for the upper levels and squeezed his trigger. Mizuno pressed it again, but from where YF stood he could see that the gun was completely offline. YF pointed his pistol in the direction Mizuno was pointing and fired once. He heard a yelp and then a thud.

Mizuno motioned forward. “We need to move quickly.”

YF followed Mizuno further into a hall. Just as they made it about twelve strides down, two mercenaries emerged from the far end. Blinding blue lights from the enemies’ rifle muzzles broke through the darkness for one second before a zipping sound indicated they had opened fire. YF and Mizuno ducked and ran back toward the room they had EMP’d earlier, diving next to the blast doors for cover.

“Do you know where we’re going?” YF shouted over the sound of bolts colliding with metal.

Mizuno shook his head. “No, but it doesn’t matter. We’re moving until we get what we came for.”

“And what is that?” asked YF.

“You’ll see soon enough.”

Four sectarians stepped into the hall, firing toward the enemy to prevent them from emerging from cover.

“Let’s go!” Mizuno yelled.

YF stood up and fought the fear rising from in his chest as he pointed his pistol toward the ceiling with both hands, standing close to the four sectarians in front. When one of the mercenaries came out of cover, YF shot one bolt toward him. The shot missed but caused the man to duck, giving time for the sectarians to swap reactors and continue providing suppressive fire.

YF tsked in frustration. “Give it to me!” he turned to Mizuno, extending his hand toward the rifle. Uwada made as if to prevent Mizuno from handing it over, but Mizuno raised an arm to block Uwada. He shoved the rifle into YF’s chest. YF wrapped his extended arm around it and nodded once to Mizuno. Mizuno nodded back. YF handed Mizuno his pistol before arming the rifle reactor, raising the butt of the gun to his shoulder. He calmed his breathing and tried to hold the sights in alignment as he moved forward. When he judged that one of the enemies would emerge soon, he stopped to keep his aim steady, pulling the trigger to the wall and holding it. The moment a black helmet showed itself he fired, a single blue bolt hitting the helmet’s faceplate and reflecting into the wall behind. The man fell backward into a seated position. The sectarians behind YF let out a blood curdling yell, shooting at the exposed legs of the man. His companion rose up valiantly to try to help the downed mercenary, but was met with a hail of bolts from the sectarians, dropping him forward face first.

YF felt a tug as Uwada pulled the rifle out of his hands, raising it to his shoulder as he rounded the corner and shot once at the first downed mercenary, ending his life. The sectarian enforcer then turned and handed the rifle back to Mizuno, giving a look toward YF before removing his own rifle from his back. YF took his pistol back from Mizuno and followed the sectarians as they turned left down the hall with Uwada now taking point. They eventually stopped at a set of blast doors.

“Pull him over here,” Uwada ordered while pointing at the second dead mercenary. One of the sectarians grabbed the corpse by the arm and dragged him over to Uwada. He then removed the armored glove and slapped it onto the panel.

“Scan complete. Nakamura Kazushi detected. Please provide a retina scan.”

“Helmet,” said Uwada.

The sectarian pulled off the mercenary’s helmet, causing an instantaneous gag reaction among all who were there as the smell of burning flesh diffused into the hall. The man had taken a bolt to the side of the head, which had melted the middle half of his face.

“Eye,” said Uwada.

The sectarian looked up.

Uwada grunted in annoyance, stomping over to where they were and reaching toward the dead man’s head, extracting what he needed for the identification scanner. The sectarian who had brought the body dropped the arm and retched onto the dead man’s armor.

“Scan complete. You may proceed.”

The blast doors opened very slowly just like the first room where they had emerged from the catering carts. When the gap was large enough to fit two men side by side, the sectarians in front opened fire indiscriminately into the room. A few bolts of return fire came the first few seconds and then stopped. When the blast door fully opened and the smoke cleared, they were greeted by a large, black tank with thick, protruding fortified edges and dead bodies laying all around it.

A woman wearing a breathing mask was floating inside the thick and milky water of the tank; it reminded YF of the one that had held Reina inside the Double Phoenix compound. YF glanced down at the “05” etched in digital font on the bottom, instantly recalling the exact same manner of number on Naka Ai’s back. Mizuno pushed past YF and motioned for the sectarian that had dragged the hook and cable to move forward. He struggled to pull it the last few shaku, needing the assistance of several of his comrades to finally reach the tank. After a few more moments where Uwada could be seen growing visibly irritated, the man finally hooked the tow hook to the tank and stood quickly to the side. Mizuno tapped something into his receiver.

YF had barely two seconds to move before the tank lurched toward the wall, the sound of the tank frame slamming into and then breaking the wall into large fragments sending a deafening shockwave through the room. YF could not hear anything as he stumbled through the hole in the wall toward the main hallway, following the column of sectarians as they made their way out of the building. One of them grabbed onto YF’s arm, pulling him along to move in step with the group.

As soon as they arrived outside YF could see distant dots moving quickly toward their position from the north. He broke into a sprint after Mizuno, who was shouting for him to get to the car. YF eventually scrambled in and slammed the door shut just in time for the latter to stomp on the accelerator and drive forward.

“Strap in, now!” Mizuno shouted.

Just as YF did, the car came to a sudden, violent stop. Mizuno continued to step on the accelerator, which slowly but surely began to move the vehicle once again. To their left and right, multiple other sectarian vehicles were also towing the thick cables. Behind them, a loud rumbling could be heard before the fortified liquid tank came bursting through the main entrance wall.

Mizuno continued to shout into the radio to coordinate with the other drivers as they hauled the tank through the wilderness, its bulk sending waves of sand spraying into the air as it dragged. YF looked behind him to see a quickly accelerating projectile headed toward their direction. He leaned forward and pressed Mizuno’s display monitor. “Hamada! Release the cable and get the fuck out of the way!”

YF turned to see a missile strike the top of a sectarian vehicle. He reached forward to grab the steering wheel, only for Mizuno to stop him by grabbing his wrist.

“Mr. Sakai,” said Mizuno sternly

YF glared at him for a moment before Mizuno motioned with his head to look out the window. In the distance, YF could see Hamada’s vehicle emerge from the smoke. It had black soot all over the armor, but the vehicle was largely intact. YF’s eyes grew wide. He turned to Mizuno, who was wearing a serious expression and focused entirely on the road ahead. YF could see the increased illumination from multiple missiles now being launched toward their position. Mizuno activated his sun visor, the opaque black helmet forming over his face.

“I hope yours has decent noise cancellation,” Uwada quipped, activating his.

YF tapped on his neck band, activating the sun visor. His chest tensed up to the point that he could feel a burning pain from shoulder to shoulder. Even with the noise cancellation, the sound of the blast against their armored vehicle made YF black out from the violent vibration, a constant ringing the only thing he could hear. In front, Mizuno was visibly struggling but still had his hands on the wheel, somehow still operating the vehicle. After a long few minutes before he could regain his hearing, YF tensed up again to brace for the second strike. But it never came. He turned and gazed through the rear window. From the angle of the rising suns YF could tell that they were moving in a general northeast direction. When the first signs of the capital city of Akeha came into view up ahead, the aircraft peeled off of their trail and turned back toward the south.