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I found myself awake later that night due to thirst. I was laying on my back with the heavy blanket pulled up to my chest, but I was still freezing underneath it. My sight was still a little fuzzy and my head was pounding due to the fact that my concussion had finally receded. I yawned heavily and sat up. The lounge was dark and otherwise quiet except for a few fans that were going in the different rooms Matt was, asleep, powered down, resting, or whatever it was that his type of Synthetic did. The others were asleep too, James was sleeping with his Akadal 1919 like it was a teddy bear and Allen's 240 was loaded, safety off, within arm's reach. The ceiling fans of the lounge were running on the low setting, helping to circle the air that the HAVOC systems were pumping into the room around. Most of the power still seemed to be out and I assumed what was powering the fans were the generators that Mike and I had fired up a few days ago.

I pushed aside the blanket and sat up, turning myself around and leaning back into the couch, yawning again, not only was I thirsty, but I was hungry too. I got up and kicked off my combat pants and pulled a shirt out of my backpack, slipping it on over my bare exo. I slunk into the kitchen, Xenomorph quietly so I wouldn't wake anyone up. I grabbed one of the class cups Sarah had been using a few days ago, filled it with water from the sink and drank it down. I would have rathered a Coke, because it always seemed to help with my headaches, but at the moment it was "use what I have or die", so tap water would have to do. I was tempted to open the fridge and grab something, but then I saw the clock was only 11PM and I was tired.

I sighed, "too tired to form coherent thought, or maybe that's my swollen brain talking."

I filled the glass again and went back to the couch. I set the glass down by the leg of the couch, lay back down and pulled the blanket over me, stretching out as far as I could. I was almost back to sleep when I heard the ,tap, tap, tap of what sounded like claws just outside the door. The sound at first came from right outside the door, but then circled around to behind the wall where my couch was and the tap became a faint scraping sound, like what ever was outside was dragging it's claws across the wall.

I sat back up, listening closely to the sound as it traced around the edges of the walls. There was a low hissing like growl coming from the insides of the walls themselves.

"That can't be good", I whispered to myself as I pushed aside the blanket. I walked to my backpack, intending to get my AK, but then I found that my other weapons and my vest were next to it, still relatively wet. I grabbed my Automag, attached the weapon light to it and grabbed a spare magazine before slinking out of the lounge and into the hallway.

The corridor's were pitch dark, I was even having problems with my natural night vision. Judging from what I was hearing, whatever was making the noise was just around the right corner, headed down the hallway, away from me. I gripped my handgun with both hands and slowly tiptoed over to the corner, edging my gun and head around the corner, inch by inch, keeping as close to the wall as I possibly could.

Walking, hunched over to a height of about 4 feet, was what looked like a feeder, but at the same time, not a feeder. It had bone tight skin, showing off the bones in it's spine, legs, arms and it's ribs were barely visible. In contrast to a Feeder, it's hide was a sick looking yellow color with red veins and arteries clearly visible. Torn bits of what looked like a security uniform and a light plate carrier still clung to it's frail looking body. It was also leaving a trail of what looked like dried blood. I could see that it's hands were severely enlarged and only hosted three, huge fingers with claws big enough to make me jealous. There were two, Decagon shaped marks on it's shoulders and one triangular one near it's waist. There were three groups of two puncture wound looking spots tracing up it's spine and small, pin pricks exactly half way up it's back. The base of it's neck was playing host to what looked like an Cerebral Interface and set in the back of it's head was a small screen surrounded by metal plating with two buttons below it. The screen was blue and reading "Error 205 Host Server Not Present"

"What on Earth?", I whispered to myself.

The creature stopped right where it was, spun around and charged right at me, it's razor tipped hands wide open. Without thinking about it I raised the Automag and emptied all eight rounds into it so fast that the gun hardly had time to recoil. The creature let off a blood curdling shriek and dropped to it's knees in mid dash, sliding for a few feet before coming to a stop. I dropped the magazine out of the Auto, jammed the spare into it and racked the slide forward as Allen and James came around the corner the second I turned around, their weapon lights all but blinding me.

"Arggh!", I growled at myself, holding my hand in front of my face.

"What the hell are you shooting at?", James asked groggily.

I stepped out of their way and allowed them to look at the ghoul. I in the backlight from his shotgun, I saw Jame's face drop.

"I don't like that look", I sighed, "the fuck is with that look?"

"That's my, "What the hell am I looking at", look", James answered crouching down.

"James", Allen said, "are these marks from a medical harness?"

"They look that way", James answered, "but....if it is the CI model is wrong, it's a EXO skeleton interface."

Allen sighed, "look at these pieces of cloth, ballistic Nylon...where's your badge?"

Allen flipped the ghoul over, allowing me to see it's frontal features. There were the torn remnants of pants, a belt with a plastic buckle and a neck radio. The creatures eyes were sunken in, almost completely rotted and it's stomach has been carved open and picked clean, allowing me to see it's spine. There was a banged up piece of metal on the torn remnants of the clothes and I could make out numbers, "40561."

"40561", Allen sighed, "tree top labs, Exo Division. That's why those marks were out of place."

"You saying this guy was security?", I asked.

Allen nodded, "a division full of new recruits at that. We had one man who was a veteran with the Exo suits training some 300 guys to use them when the outbreak hit", Allen flipped the ghoul over again He inspected the red, gory wounds on it's back, then turned it back over and inspected more, I shaped marks on his arms, legs and one, star shaped marking on it's chest.

"Judging by how rough the edges around the implant marks are, and given the fact that the bolts connecting to the bone are jagged, this man was overpowered by several mutants, and had his Exo ripped straight from his body while he was still breathing and it lead to mass displacement trauma, which seems to be what killed him."

"That makes no sense", James said, "if MDT was the cause of death, then what turned him into...this?"

"I couldn't tell you", Allen said, "Sarah will have to do a full autopsy before I can know for sure, which will be hard since the power's out."

"I can manage", Sarah said coming around the corner, still dressed in her night clothes, "take it to my lab and I'll get started."

I reached down and picked up the ghoul's body, carrying it to Sarah's lab and setting it down on the exam table. Sarah began to go through her drawers and cabinets, taking out all kinds of tools that looked more fitting for building a stone house than cutting a corpse.

"Why all of the construction hardware?", I asked, "those tools look more like their used for cutting stone instead of a carcass."

"Bone is pretty freaking hard", Sarah said bringing her tools over to the table, "you can stay if you want, but you'll have to stay back, who knows what kind of disease this thing might be carrying."

"Message received", I said stepping back.

Sarah pulled on a blue plastic hazmat suit and began looking over the ghoul. She pulled all of the rags off of it, tossed them into a bio hazard bin and did what I would call a very basic physical inspection. I saw her take more than a few glances at the neck area and mutter something that I couldn't make out and then she pulled out what I would say was a Grinder and checked the battery.

"45% charged", she sighed, "hope that's enough."

She flipped on the cutter and cut straight through the ghoul's skull. The process took a few minutes during which I learned what burning bone smelled like. Like dead shit, to put it lightly. When Sarah was finally through the bone of the ghoul's skull, she picked up a small crowbar like instrument and split it apart.

"Oh what in the?", she asked.

"What?"

"The brain is freaking chunky soup", she answered.

"What?", I asked standing up.

"The brain looks like condensed soup from a can", she answered, "I've been doing this for 16 years and I've never seen this before, come here."

I walked over to the table. She hadn't lied. The brain was leaking out of the cranial cavity like water and jello. It was laden with yellow mucus, brown blood and what looked like pink water, but I guessed was brain juice, literally.

"Okay..", I sighed, "that's...disturbing."

"Bring me my chem tubes", Sarah said pointing to a desk that contained a larges chemistry set, "I need to run a few tests."

I walked over to the desk and picked up a set of glass tubes in a rack and then handed them off to her. She took samples of the liquefied brain and then put them into the centrifuge she had used earlier for the bag of meat that Mike and I had found a few days ago. She stuck the tubes in and set it to spin. She pulled up her office chair and sat back in it with her head in her hands.

'Something wrong?", I asked leaning against the counter.

She didn't answer me. She grabbed a small, hand held computer and plugged it into the man's Cerebral interface. She sat there and screwed with it for at least a half hour before she pulled it out and plugged it into a laptop. She opened a System File Reader, clicked a few buttons, closed a few pop up windows and then started printing it out.

"What did Allen say was the cause of death?", she asked looking me in the eyes, "besides 8 .50 action rounds in the chest and abdomen?"

"Mass Displacement Trauma", I answered, "something about how the man's Exo skeleton was ripped off of him."

She sighed, "there are internal injuries consistent with that of MDT, however, I don't think MDT was what caused this man to die."

"So what was?', I asked.

"The mucus I found inside the cranial cavity is consistent with an Isotope of Number 12, in particular Number 12-ER4, which is intensely hydropylic."

"Meaning?", I asked.

"It's a sponge", Sarah said, "it likes water, but it's the wrong color."

"Color?"

"The spliced in genes encoded to luminesce, making this bacteria easily identifiable. But it should glow orange, not yellow, so I can't figure out what caused it to switch wavelengths, unless it mutated."

"Chemical 240?", I asked.

She sighed, "doubtful, Chemical 240 is worthless when dealing with single cell organisms especially ones like this. Typical Confederate BS weapons of mass destruction intended to wipe out hostile forces or maybe even entire populations and immune to all biological counter measures."

I sighed, "guess biology has it's bad points."

"Keep preaching to the deaf brother", Sarah said, "one thing I still don't understand is why it's brain isn't a grey, crusty lump, with all that bacteria in there, it should have been dry as a star."

"Did the mutation maybe reverse it?", I asked.

"Possibly", She said sliding her chair over to the printer, which was just finishing printing out several documents, "let's see."

She reached into her desk and pulled out a small book light and began reading through the documents.

"Oh my god", she whispered.

"What?", I asked.

"It is, it's an Isotope of Chemical 240", she answered.

"What's the Isotope?", I asked.

"Chemical 240ET", she said, "designed for integrating software and run time into human brains and the new Biological line of computers."

"That even sounds dangerous", I said.

"Integration has a 4% survival rate", she said, "at least for humans, for everything else it's 97.985%. This man attempted to install drivers for what looks like a Nano Armor System to fit over his Exo with manual controls, the survival rate for that is practically null. From what I'm seeing here, his Exo sensors registered massive trauma to the head, heart and lungs as well as a pretty high dose of E3."

"E3?", I asked.

"The most dangerous venom known to man", she answered, "It's found only on Earth, in the Black Mama Spider, which was a result of some fools in Earths most secure research lab having a few beers on the job and getting careless as fuck with their equipment and containment procedures."

"Wow", I said, "strong words."

"Sorry", she sighed, "the situation just got worse, because if we got BM spiders running around, then it's only a matter of time before Chemical 240 gets to have fun with them, if it hasn't already."

"In short?", I asked.

"Remember the movie 8 Legged Freaks?", she asked.

I shook my head.

"Course you don't, old ass movie", she answered, "anyhow, in the movie a scientist was playing God with a couple of spiders and ended up turning loose a plague of giant, venomous spiders on the people of a small town. There are more than enough tall things in this lab that 240 could easily pick something up and then start throwing giant spiders at us."

"Giant spiders?", I asked, "this planet is getting less enjoyable by the minute, here I was thinking that the suck factor was maxed out. You sure that 240 can mutate something that's already been mutated?"

"Positive", she answered, "it's a question of how much though, like you said when we first found out about 240 being lose, 99% don't survive, it's the 1% that you have to worry about."

"Let's hope that 1% is vulnerable to 7.62x54 NATO ammunition then", I said, "because I'm running out of .950 Tyrannosaurs Magnum."

Sarah rose from her chair, "let's go show this crap to James then."

We walked out of the lab with Sarah following behind me because of the dark. I walked back to the lounge and slid the door open, once again finding Allen's Bravo ready to hand me 200 small, fast moving presents.

"Your gonna get shot Sky", Allen said clicking off his weapon light.

"I can see that", I said.

"Did you determine cause of death?", Tyler asked, "that was a really quick autopsy, even for you."

"Cause of death was failed Runtime ingratiation", she said tossing the file on the kitchen table.

"Runtime?", James asked, "that guy was trying to download a Java file into his brain?"

"Yes", Sarah said, "he was trying to download runtime for Nano Armor System Version 1.8.7 alpha. His chip showed elevated heart rate, high breathing rate, increased blood pressure, a failure of an artificial heart valve regulator and complete Exo system's failure. The runtime downloaded, but didn't install successfully and fried his cerebral cortex like a chicken nugget."

"So it was a failed attempt at downloading new Exo software", James sighed.

"That's not even the weird part", Sarah continued, "I also found a large quantity of Number 12 Isotope ER4 in the cranial cavity which rendered his brain chunky jello soup. I also found a pretty hefty dose of E4 from the Black Mamba spider in his cardiovascular system, which seems caused his implanted heart valve to shut off."

"Damn", Tyler said, "anyone of those things would have killed him, did you find what his last contact before his death was?"

"No", she answered, "most of the data in his chip was corrupted to 40% or higher."

Tyler sighed, "back to square one. This so unfair! Just when I think I'm one step ahead of 240 I get thrown something like Martin or this goddamned power outage!"

"Calm down Tyler", Allen said.

"How the fuck do you expect me to calm down?", Tyler snapped, "you don't get it do you Allen? It's gone. All of our power, is gone. I just became a fucking paperweight because all I can do now is sit with my thumb up my ass. I'm not Mike, I'm not Sarah, I'm not you, James and most of all I am NOT Skyline. I am not good with a rifle, I am not Sarah, she who can find out everything that's wrong with the creatures Mike and Sky kill. 'm only worth something if I've got a Super Computer in front of me and since the 300 just SHUT ITSELF DOWN, I'm worthless."

"Shut up Tyler", Jacob said, "you still have a place here, stay on watch with Allen if you really need to be actively doing something that badly."

"What part of, I can't shoot", Tyler asked, "didn't you get? I'm good with a keyboard and Binary Code, not a fucking .45."

"Yet you carry one. You'd be surprised how well you can do something when your life is on the line", I said, "it took me three years from the first time I picked up a gun to shoot straight."

"Seriously", James said, "if you need to be actively doing something, help Sarah when she and Allen go looking for supplies, or help me keep things in order here, just cause the PC's are down doesn't make you worthless."

Tyler sighed and walked back into the security room, and then James turned to me.

"Son", he said, "tomorrow I want you and Mike to pay the treetop Cybernetics lab a visit. Don't take anything, shoot anything if you can help it, or try and find survivors, just go, look around, come back and tell me what you saw. If you happen across survivors or maybe something they left behind, then bring them back, otherwise just recon."

"Will do boss man", I said.

"You sure your okay to go though?", Sarah asked.

I cracked my neck, "never been better."