“The Reformers”
Written by John Cheese
Breath from the occupant fogged up the glass of the UAZ truck parked at the rest spot overlooking the hillside, as the figure dressed in a thick jacket and snow pants held up a small satellite dish outside in the cold.
“This is definitely the area described by the old Soviet reports,” the man sitting in the passenger seat, dressed in a white dress shirt overlaid by a red ski jacket and thick trousers stated, his electronic eye scanning the hillside.
“Yes, the underground complex is here, the final step to reformation is here if we’re brave enough to take that step, Jennifer.”
His comrade, a blonde-haired woman dressed in black armour narrowed her eyes before placing her hands on the dashboard and turning to face the man. “You have been a friend William, helped me investigate my mother’s death, even turned your attention towards making the world a better place.”
“But you don’t feel comfortable about this do you?” William stated as the man holding the satellite dish accidentally dropped it, the dashboard computer of the UAZ flickered as it lost its internet signal.
“You said every step of the Reformation was necessary, and up till now I agreed, even going as far as permanently removing drug dealers and assassins from the board, but this,” she stopped and sighed, her gauntleted fingers digging into the UAZ’s dashboard, “we don’t need this Project Widower.”
“Project Widower is a key to the reformation, but we’re not here to take it, moreover we’re here to bury it once and for all,” William replied as he eased Jennifer’s fingers out of the dashboard. “Not to mention those who would seek to take advantage of it.”
“And you promise it will be destroyed,” Jennifer asked as she looked at William, his cybernetic eye beginning to frost over from the cold.
“I promise.”
“Then let the reformation finally begin,” Jennifer replied as she got out of the UAZ, the man with the satellite dish looking first at William before moving to follow her down the slope.
“More accurately let it end,” William stated softly as he slipped out of the passenger seat and went to the back of the UAZ, before pulling a gun case and a camouflage tarp out. “And let the world come to terms with the new order.”
“This is definitely the area described by the old Soviet reports,” the man sitting in the passenger seat, dressed in a white dress shirt overlaid by a red ski jacket and thick trousers stated, his electronic eye scanning the hillside.
“Yes, the underground complex is here, the final step to reformation is here if we’re brave enough to take that step, Jennifer.”
His comrade, a blonde-haired woman dressed in black armour narrowed her eyes before placing her hands on the dashboard and turning to face the man. “You have been a friend William, helped me investigate my mother’s death, even turned your attention towards making the world a better place.”
“But you don’t feel comfortable about this do you?” William stated as the man holding the satellite dish accidentally dropped it, the dashboard computer of the UAZ flickered as it lost its internet signal.
“You said every step of the Reformation was necessary, and up till now I agreed, even going as far as permanently removing drug dealers and assassins from the board, but this,” she stopped and sighed, her gauntleted fingers digging into the UAZ’s dashboard, “we don’t need this Project Widower.”
“Project Widower is a key to the reformation, but we’re not here to take it, moreover we’re here to bury it once and for all,” William replied as he eased Jennifer’s fingers out of the dashboard. “Not to mention those who would seek to take advantage of it.”
“And you promise it will be destroyed,” Jennifer asked as she looked at William, his cybernetic eye beginning to frost over from the cold.
“I promise.”
“Then let the reformation finally begin,” Jennifer replied as she got out of the UAZ, the man with the satellite dish looking first at William before moving to follow her down the slope.
“More accurately let it end,” William stated softly as he slipped out of the passenger seat and went to the back of the UAZ, before pulling a gun case and a camouflage tarp out. “And let the world come to terms with the new order.”
**********
The man dressed in the thick jacket probed the snowbank with his espada listening for any tell-tale sound of the hatch. With a clunk, he stopped and straightened up, before waving Jennifer over from the snowdrift she was searching. As she walked over, the pair of them began to brush the snow away to reveal a metal hatch with the letters Доброкачественный-Грузовой вагон stencilled on the surface.
“Manuel, the key,” Jennifer stated as she took a step back from the entrance. Nodding his head, Manuel held his espada over the hatch, before running the blade across the surface, sparks flying as it cut through the metal. Backing to the edge of the hatch, Manuel looked at Jennifer before they both slammed their boots down on the hatch causing it to cave in and land with a loud clang.
“Ladies first,” Manuel stated as Jennifer illuminated the gaps between her Black Scorpion armour as she dropped down into the corridor below. Following her down, Manuel sheathed his espada when he landed and removed a set of bayonet mines from inside his coat. “What exactly are we looking for? Stockpiled nuclear assets, chemical weapons, maybe some kind of old Soviet doomsday weapons?” He asked as the pair of them walked down the corridor past rows and rows of lockers with their doors hanging off as rust began to take hold of the facility.
“This facility was a repair shop according to the files William and Ludwig uncovered,” Jennifer replied as they walked past a facility map, cut marks running across the reinforced steel plate, and to another door that led to a large chamber, electric lights flickering in the gloom. The pair took three steps between them into the room before they stopped and looked at the alcoves in the wall and the computers hooked up to bulky red suits of armour.
“Crimson Dynamo suits,” Jennifer whispered as they edged through the chamber, text scrolling on the screens of the computers as they ran diagnostics on the suits of armour. “Those are new, that’s not what this facility was built for.” She added as Manuel plugged a bayonet mine into one of the big cables snaking across the floor, twisting the top priming it for a staggered detonation.
Leaving the room Jennifer and Manuel walked through the next corridor before arriving in what appeared to be a morgue, the room uncomfortably warm as if someone was trying to keep it as hot as possible in the chamber.
“If the Dynamos are new, then what was here?” Manuel asked as he shucked his ski-jacket to reveal a black matador’s costume underneath.
“This is what.” Jennifer replied as she opened a morgue drawer to reveal a young woman tied down with cropped brown hair dressed in a black catsuit, dried blood had leaked out from the massive cut on her chest, part of her intestine poking out. As the drawer came to a stop, the woman began to thrash and try to break her restraints, the intestine flopping around until Jennifer closed the drawer, locking her back inside.
“Mios Dios the Soviets made zombies in the 1980s!” Manuel spat as Jennifer took one of the bayonet mines and stabbed it into the computer on the desk in the corner of the room.
“Project Widower was designed to reincarnate operatives of the Black Widow project using a cluster of junk DNA implanted as standard in the second-generation Red Room assassins,” William stated over the radio link as Manuel and Jennifer left the room and walked past another map, this one torn off the wall, reaching a large hall with a cage lift heading to the surface.
“Wait, if this just affects Black Widows, what is the problem?” Manuel asked as he stabbed a bayonet mine into a massive fuel tank next to the lift shaft.
“The Crimson Dynamo suits are new, someone is down here restoring equipment and possibly taking material offsite,” William informed them as Jennifer and Manuel looked at the two corridors running off of the main chamber. “Information pertaining to Project Widower can’t be allowed to leave this facility.”
“That’s why the auxiliary records room is our next stop,” Jennifer replied as she walked towards the righthand corridor filled with slowly leaking steam pipes. Moving through the steamy fog, Jennifer walked into a small room filled with filing cabinets, the drawers etched with Cyrillic letters.
“Burn them all?” Manuel asked as Jennifer pulled one of the drawers open to reveal rows and rows of files.
Jennifer responded with a nod, before charging a pulse of energy into the files in the drawer, the files igniting.
Following her lead, Manuel opened a file cabinet and stabbed a bayonet mine into each of the three drawers, before priming them ready for remote detonation. Looking back into the corridor, Manuel saw something dash past the doorway to the records room. Wordlessly they looked at each other, before heading out into the steam tunnel, the light given off by Jennifer’s Black Scorpion armour distorting the shadows in the fog.
“Let’s hit the main administration room, wire it and ride out of here on a massive fireball,” Manuel stated as he drew his espada and led the way back to the main lift room.
“This place does have a certain horror aesthetic to it, I think we can agree the world will be better off with one less creepy cold war bunker,” Jennifer added, before freezing as something chimed up ahead and behind them, followed by multiple explosions, hemming them in a choking halo of flame.
“I wondered who was seeding munitions through this facility,” a voice echoed through the corridor; the words slightly distorted by the sheer neglect the PA system had gone through after the bunker had been abandoned.
“Luckily I have no use for this facility, everything of worth has been removed, and to compound my luck, once I found on one of your mines, I was able to cross-reference the serial number to find out everything I needed to,” it added as Jennifer and Manuel got to their feet, the walls of the corridor singed and blackened. “I even made a note to make sure I was more careful who I sell weapons too.”
“Who…who is that?” Manuel gasped as Jennifer shook slightly and began to touch her thumb with the tips of each of her fingers on her right hand. “Jen, stop I need you to keep focused.”
“I should have checked the source of the manifest,” Jennifer stated as she bit her lip, blood dripping down her chin. “I should have checked everything…I should have checked…” she stammered as a red light shone from the direction of the repair room and a crimson repulsor beam shot out turning the blackened concrete into glass shrapnel. Lumbering into the room came one of the Crimson Dynamo suits, its plates buckled and warped in places, but still functional and dangerous.
“Come on then el Torros Rosso.” Manuel grunted as he walked past Jennifer’s shuddering body, his cape in both hands as he dropped into a combat stance. With a mechanical whine, the Crimson Dynamo fired another repulsor, striking the cape, the energy dissipating off the surface on the fabric. With a screech, the Crimson Dynamo lunged forward only for his opponent to step aside, and sharp pain to slide through his left knee as the Matador slipped a veronica lance into a crack in the armour.
Screaming in pain, the Crimson Dynamo fired up his repulsors to create a glowing aura around his hands as he went to grab the Matador, only for Manuel to meet his strike with a pair of dart-like banderillas, the blades and the repulsor emitters detonating, leaving cauterised stumps as the gauntlets collapsed. Snarling and howling, the pilot inside the Crimson Dynamo armour fired off a rocket from his shoulder launcher, sending Manuel flying towards the burning remains of the lift.
With a mechanical groan, the Crimson Dynamo crossed the lift hall to where Manuel was getting to his feet, a mechanical foot slamming down on his ribs.
“You die Amerikan!” The Crimson Dynamo pilot snarled in accented English as Manuel drew his espada, only for the Dynamo to knock it away.
“Jennifer, I need you.” Manuel groaned as the Crimson Dynamo socketed a second rocket in the shoulder launcher. “You may have messed up, we can deal with it, but not if you mess up again and get me killed!” He added, the Black Scorpion looked up from where she was rolling her wrist gauntlet back and forth to bruise the skin underneath, blood dripping over her armour. Reacting as fast as she could Jennifer fired an energy blast, the discharge detonating the Crimson Dynamo’s onboard munitions and blowing off segments of the power armour clean off the pilot inside.
“Crimson Dynamo Mark IV Armour first commissioned in 1986,” Jennifer stated as the Crimson Dynamo turned to look at her, the remainder of the armour smoking from the damage it had already taken. “Micro munitions, high powered strontium lasers and Gatling revolvers mounted in the gauntlets in addition to the modifications…” she continued as the Dynamo charged towards her at full speed. Dropping and rolling Jennifer grabbed the dropped espada and flung it backwards, “…for ramming, unfortunately, the throat armour was slightly thinner than the rest of the suit.” She finished, as the Crimson Dynamo blade embedded in his throat skidded towards her, casually sidestepping the metal missile as it clanged into the lift shaft.
“You’re scary, you know that,” Manuel stated as he got to his feet, before tackling Jennifer to the ground as the cable supporting the lift car snapped and plummeted to the shaft, smashing down onto the Crimson Dynamo as the pilot forced the suit back onto to its feet one last time. The resulting collision and subsequent explosion sent what was left of the armour's helmet rocketing across the room like a bullet before smashing on the opposite wall.
“I killed a man, one just following orders,” Jennifer stated flatly as she got to her feet. “I feel like a monster.”
“You also saved a man, granted I am a monster but I’m trying to become something better, just like you are,” Manuel replied as he walked over to the lift and wrenched the espada out of the Crimson Dynamo armour, the blade snapped off and trapped under the lift. “The bayonet mines, where did they come from?”
“A man called Kogar, he’s a smuggler for the black market, Cross ordered the mines and I tracked them to where they were manufactured.” Jennifer sighed as the sound of screeching metal began to sound from where the Crimson Dynamo armour had been stored. “Let’s not go for round two with the heavy metal corp.” She added as the pair of them headed to the main records room, cutting through the steam into the room, a mixture of modern computers and old Soviet hardware sitting beside each other. Looking at each other Manuel and Jennifer nodded to each other, and began flinging bayonet mines into every computer present.
Explosives laid; Jennifer looked up to an emergency exit with the words Ржавые-Рассвет stencilled on it. Scaling the ladder, she blasted the hatch open with an energy blast, before emerging on the surface. Following her up Manuel got to the surface just as a staccato of gunfire ripped across the surface of the bunker from the treeline. Dashing behind the concrete lip of the bunker, Manuel saw a man dressed in winter military gear, his left eye covered with an eye patch his left arm replaced with a bayoneted blaster.
“Kogar, I presume,” Manuel called as he looked around for Jennifer, his fingers on the cascade detonator for the remaining bayonet mines.
“You presume right,” the man replied as additional hatches opened behind him, and a red glow began to emanate from the underground bunker. “Where is the woman?” He added as he took a step forward towards the open concrete hatch.
“You tell me.” Manuel replied as he saw a red dot dance past Kogar to over the launch tubes where the Crimson Dynamos were about to emerge.
“Your tight lips will be your undoing,” Kogar hissed as he walked around the hatch and cocked his bayonet blaster. “Last chance where is she?” He snarled as Manuel saw what appeared to be a heat haze dart behind him before solidifying into black armour.
“Right here.” Jennifer growled as she fired a blast into Kogar’s back, the discharge staggering him enough for the Black Scorpion to place him into a pacifying head lock. “Call off your Dynamos or you feel my armour’s sting,” she ordered as the first Crimson Dynamo crawled out of the launch tube, its armour gleaming in the cold Siberian afternoon.
“They are not mine; they were gifts given to me by the Horsemen,” Kogar barked as the bayonet blade rotated and ejected straight towards Jennifer, stabbing into her shoulder. Releasing her grip just slightly, Jennifer felt Kogar kick-off against the roof of the bunker, sending the pair of them slamming back down into the records room. “War, Famine, Pestilence and the thing I’m about to deliver to you…” Kogarr stated as he pressed a button on his arm, the bayonet mines begin to whine as they counted down to detonation, “…Death!”
To Be Continued…
“Manuel, the key,” Jennifer stated as she took a step back from the entrance. Nodding his head, Manuel held his espada over the hatch, before running the blade across the surface, sparks flying as it cut through the metal. Backing to the edge of the hatch, Manuel looked at Jennifer before they both slammed their boots down on the hatch causing it to cave in and land with a loud clang.
“Ladies first,” Manuel stated as Jennifer illuminated the gaps between her Black Scorpion armour as she dropped down into the corridor below. Following her down, Manuel sheathed his espada when he landed and removed a set of bayonet mines from inside his coat. “What exactly are we looking for? Stockpiled nuclear assets, chemical weapons, maybe some kind of old Soviet doomsday weapons?” He asked as the pair of them walked down the corridor past rows and rows of lockers with their doors hanging off as rust began to take hold of the facility.
“This facility was a repair shop according to the files William and Ludwig uncovered,” Jennifer replied as they walked past a facility map, cut marks running across the reinforced steel plate, and to another door that led to a large chamber, electric lights flickering in the gloom. The pair took three steps between them into the room before they stopped and looked at the alcoves in the wall and the computers hooked up to bulky red suits of armour.
“Crimson Dynamo suits,” Jennifer whispered as they edged through the chamber, text scrolling on the screens of the computers as they ran diagnostics on the suits of armour. “Those are new, that’s not what this facility was built for.” She added as Manuel plugged a bayonet mine into one of the big cables snaking across the floor, twisting the top priming it for a staggered detonation.
Leaving the room Jennifer and Manuel walked through the next corridor before arriving in what appeared to be a morgue, the room uncomfortably warm as if someone was trying to keep it as hot as possible in the chamber.
“If the Dynamos are new, then what was here?” Manuel asked as he shucked his ski-jacket to reveal a black matador’s costume underneath.
“This is what.” Jennifer replied as she opened a morgue drawer to reveal a young woman tied down with cropped brown hair dressed in a black catsuit, dried blood had leaked out from the massive cut on her chest, part of her intestine poking out. As the drawer came to a stop, the woman began to thrash and try to break her restraints, the intestine flopping around until Jennifer closed the drawer, locking her back inside.
“Mios Dios the Soviets made zombies in the 1980s!” Manuel spat as Jennifer took one of the bayonet mines and stabbed it into the computer on the desk in the corner of the room.
“Project Widower was designed to reincarnate operatives of the Black Widow project using a cluster of junk DNA implanted as standard in the second-generation Red Room assassins,” William stated over the radio link as Manuel and Jennifer left the room and walked past another map, this one torn off the wall, reaching a large hall with a cage lift heading to the surface.
“Wait, if this just affects Black Widows, what is the problem?” Manuel asked as he stabbed a bayonet mine into a massive fuel tank next to the lift shaft.
“The Crimson Dynamo suits are new, someone is down here restoring equipment and possibly taking material offsite,” William informed them as Jennifer and Manuel looked at the two corridors running off of the main chamber. “Information pertaining to Project Widower can’t be allowed to leave this facility.”
“That’s why the auxiliary records room is our next stop,” Jennifer replied as she walked towards the righthand corridor filled with slowly leaking steam pipes. Moving through the steamy fog, Jennifer walked into a small room filled with filing cabinets, the drawers etched with Cyrillic letters.
“Burn them all?” Manuel asked as Jennifer pulled one of the drawers open to reveal rows and rows of files.
Jennifer responded with a nod, before charging a pulse of energy into the files in the drawer, the files igniting.
Following her lead, Manuel opened a file cabinet and stabbed a bayonet mine into each of the three drawers, before priming them ready for remote detonation. Looking back into the corridor, Manuel saw something dash past the doorway to the records room. Wordlessly they looked at each other, before heading out into the steam tunnel, the light given off by Jennifer’s Black Scorpion armour distorting the shadows in the fog.
“Let’s hit the main administration room, wire it and ride out of here on a massive fireball,” Manuel stated as he drew his espada and led the way back to the main lift room.
“This place does have a certain horror aesthetic to it, I think we can agree the world will be better off with one less creepy cold war bunker,” Jennifer added, before freezing as something chimed up ahead and behind them, followed by multiple explosions, hemming them in a choking halo of flame.
“I wondered who was seeding munitions through this facility,” a voice echoed through the corridor; the words slightly distorted by the sheer neglect the PA system had gone through after the bunker had been abandoned.
“Luckily I have no use for this facility, everything of worth has been removed, and to compound my luck, once I found on one of your mines, I was able to cross-reference the serial number to find out everything I needed to,” it added as Jennifer and Manuel got to their feet, the walls of the corridor singed and blackened. “I even made a note to make sure I was more careful who I sell weapons too.”
“Who…who is that?” Manuel gasped as Jennifer shook slightly and began to touch her thumb with the tips of each of her fingers on her right hand. “Jen, stop I need you to keep focused.”
“I should have checked the source of the manifest,” Jennifer stated as she bit her lip, blood dripping down her chin. “I should have checked everything…I should have checked…” she stammered as a red light shone from the direction of the repair room and a crimson repulsor beam shot out turning the blackened concrete into glass shrapnel. Lumbering into the room came one of the Crimson Dynamo suits, its plates buckled and warped in places, but still functional and dangerous.
“Come on then el Torros Rosso.” Manuel grunted as he walked past Jennifer’s shuddering body, his cape in both hands as he dropped into a combat stance. With a mechanical whine, the Crimson Dynamo fired another repulsor, striking the cape, the energy dissipating off the surface on the fabric. With a screech, the Crimson Dynamo lunged forward only for his opponent to step aside, and sharp pain to slide through his left knee as the Matador slipped a veronica lance into a crack in the armour.
Screaming in pain, the Crimson Dynamo fired up his repulsors to create a glowing aura around his hands as he went to grab the Matador, only for Manuel to meet his strike with a pair of dart-like banderillas, the blades and the repulsor emitters detonating, leaving cauterised stumps as the gauntlets collapsed. Snarling and howling, the pilot inside the Crimson Dynamo armour fired off a rocket from his shoulder launcher, sending Manuel flying towards the burning remains of the lift.
With a mechanical groan, the Crimson Dynamo crossed the lift hall to where Manuel was getting to his feet, a mechanical foot slamming down on his ribs.
“You die Amerikan!” The Crimson Dynamo pilot snarled in accented English as Manuel drew his espada, only for the Dynamo to knock it away.
“Jennifer, I need you.” Manuel groaned as the Crimson Dynamo socketed a second rocket in the shoulder launcher. “You may have messed up, we can deal with it, but not if you mess up again and get me killed!” He added, the Black Scorpion looked up from where she was rolling her wrist gauntlet back and forth to bruise the skin underneath, blood dripping over her armour. Reacting as fast as she could Jennifer fired an energy blast, the discharge detonating the Crimson Dynamo’s onboard munitions and blowing off segments of the power armour clean off the pilot inside.
“Crimson Dynamo Mark IV Armour first commissioned in 1986,” Jennifer stated as the Crimson Dynamo turned to look at her, the remainder of the armour smoking from the damage it had already taken. “Micro munitions, high powered strontium lasers and Gatling revolvers mounted in the gauntlets in addition to the modifications…” she continued as the Dynamo charged towards her at full speed. Dropping and rolling Jennifer grabbed the dropped espada and flung it backwards, “…for ramming, unfortunately, the throat armour was slightly thinner than the rest of the suit.” She finished, as the Crimson Dynamo blade embedded in his throat skidded towards her, casually sidestepping the metal missile as it clanged into the lift shaft.
“You’re scary, you know that,” Manuel stated as he got to his feet, before tackling Jennifer to the ground as the cable supporting the lift car snapped and plummeted to the shaft, smashing down onto the Crimson Dynamo as the pilot forced the suit back onto to its feet one last time. The resulting collision and subsequent explosion sent what was left of the armour's helmet rocketing across the room like a bullet before smashing on the opposite wall.
“I killed a man, one just following orders,” Jennifer stated flatly as she got to her feet. “I feel like a monster.”
“You also saved a man, granted I am a monster but I’m trying to become something better, just like you are,” Manuel replied as he walked over to the lift and wrenched the espada out of the Crimson Dynamo armour, the blade snapped off and trapped under the lift. “The bayonet mines, where did they come from?”
“A man called Kogar, he’s a smuggler for the black market, Cross ordered the mines and I tracked them to where they were manufactured.” Jennifer sighed as the sound of screeching metal began to sound from where the Crimson Dynamo armour had been stored. “Let’s not go for round two with the heavy metal corp.” She added as the pair of them headed to the main records room, cutting through the steam into the room, a mixture of modern computers and old Soviet hardware sitting beside each other. Looking at each other Manuel and Jennifer nodded to each other, and began flinging bayonet mines into every computer present.
Explosives laid; Jennifer looked up to an emergency exit with the words Ржавые-Рассвет stencilled on it. Scaling the ladder, she blasted the hatch open with an energy blast, before emerging on the surface. Following her up Manuel got to the surface just as a staccato of gunfire ripped across the surface of the bunker from the treeline. Dashing behind the concrete lip of the bunker, Manuel saw a man dressed in winter military gear, his left eye covered with an eye patch his left arm replaced with a bayoneted blaster.
“Kogar, I presume,” Manuel called as he looked around for Jennifer, his fingers on the cascade detonator for the remaining bayonet mines.
“You presume right,” the man replied as additional hatches opened behind him, and a red glow began to emanate from the underground bunker. “Where is the woman?” He added as he took a step forward towards the open concrete hatch.
“You tell me.” Manuel replied as he saw a red dot dance past Kogar to over the launch tubes where the Crimson Dynamos were about to emerge.
“Your tight lips will be your undoing,” Kogar hissed as he walked around the hatch and cocked his bayonet blaster. “Last chance where is she?” He snarled as Manuel saw what appeared to be a heat haze dart behind him before solidifying into black armour.
“Right here.” Jennifer growled as she fired a blast into Kogar’s back, the discharge staggering him enough for the Black Scorpion to place him into a pacifying head lock. “Call off your Dynamos or you feel my armour’s sting,” she ordered as the first Crimson Dynamo crawled out of the launch tube, its armour gleaming in the cold Siberian afternoon.
“They are not mine; they were gifts given to me by the Horsemen,” Kogar barked as the bayonet blade rotated and ejected straight towards Jennifer, stabbing into her shoulder. Releasing her grip just slightly, Jennifer felt Kogar kick-off against the roof of the bunker, sending the pair of them slamming back down into the records room. “War, Famine, Pestilence and the thing I’m about to deliver to you…” Kogarr stated as he pressed a button on his arm, the bayonet mines begin to whine as they counted down to detonation, “…Death!”
To Be Continued…