Ludonear Ferta said
"And you were so promising...", Leona said and sighed. It was as if all emotion in Leona's face and all interest in Renia were suddenly gone. "Renia, I would have loved to answer your questions if you'd have been a little bit more respectful. I'm not just some lowly soldier. Now, I could answer all your questions or I could just kick you out of Trinea. Honestly, I don't really care. You seemed very interesting to me, but then you just decided to start commanding things." Leona didn't even look at Snyper anymore, instead she was inspecting her nails. "Now, would you mind asking me those questions again, a bit more polite? Also, please don't think I'm being unreasonable, the military of the country the current rulers of Grinï originate from would have imprisoned you for what you just did. Was I respectful towards you? Did I do something to offend you? I don't think I did..."

"I apologize, a bad habit from my days in the military and when I was leading my own mercs. I was not sure of your position towards me and I just used my usual way of dealing with such situations. Now cloud we please cut to the chase? I would like that you answer my previous questions, if that is possible" Renia replied, while doing her best to sound as good-willed as possible. "Man, dealing with living humans which are not trying to kill you is such a bother," she thought while keeping her best smile on her face. Just to keep her mind of the wish to shoot someone to get her annoyance out of her system, she run the calculations that every good sniper makes before making a shot inside her head. It calmed her nerves down a bit, but only for now ...

"Hm, yes that all sounds nice, but when I asked the third question I was asking about access to free equipment, repairs, ammo and so on. I was asking if there is a solid material reason for me to join the Defense Force not the usual morality, honor & solidarity thing that I heard from almost every army recruiter that spoke to me," Snyper said as her mouth stretched into a expressionless straight line: "So tell me what, in materials, can the Defense Force provide to me that I would hardly be able to get with money or freelance work alone? And don't worry the only thing I want from this city is an opportunity to restock supplies and move one with my journey as soon as possible, except if I find a good reason to stay here, but even then I doubt I will be to curious about this city's inter workings or defense systems."
Renia waited for a reply ...

"Well", Leona began, "we have a research faction who's work is mostly dedicated to ending this plague. We occasionally get new toys and those can be your as well. Equipment, ammo and the repairs are all free. Though if you wish to leave you'll have to pay for what you take with you. Anyhow, about the new toys we occasionally get, I doubt you can get those weapons and anything else they provide us with anywhere else in the world. After all, we don't have any other countries to share our findings with. And so the new technology just stays here, in our hands, waiting to be used against the undead or whatever treat they were designed to fight. There's lots of rumours coming from that place. Like scientist inventing laser beams that actually work. They gave a prototype to me once. After a second the battery or fuel or whatever ran out and it was so inaccurate that the people behind me had to wear protective clothing, but it was a nice light show anyway. And if I could give you one good reason to stay, we have everything here. Not just safety and food and all that stuff. We get to fight those things as well. Some of our soldiers only like the entire thing. Food, entertainment, killing and no worries."

"Did she just say laser gun? I knew they were more technologically advanced on the South but this is incredible, I must freaking see the thing as soon as possible," Renia thought while giving a reply: "Well then consider me in, at least until I think that I am ready to leave the city. Now before whatever else procedure we have to do I would like to share a information, as a sign of good will, about the previously mentioned island. I actually met someone from the island, a pilot that run our of fuel due to a hole in the tank of his plane. He was from the island and I used some of the last space on my camera to film as much of his talks about the island as possible. He even gave me the azimuth of the island and the distance he traveled before landing. Unfortunately he died while we were crossing trough a brainless-infested area, had to blow his head of so he wouldn't turn into one of them. I will gladly provide you with the recordings from my SD card if you want to examine them yourself. But how about we take care of any formalities left and then get to that if you wish so." Snyper waited, a faint smile on her face, for a reply...

"Underground training facility you say," Renia said as she followed Leona, her face with a faint trace of a smile as she said, walking after Leona: "What kind of fighting ability? As long as I can throw, shot or fire something at my enemy I will defeat them with a single shot to where the damage is maximal. Had only to shot something more then once three times in my life, the first being a tank, the second a airplane and the third some kind of speeder brainless which dodged my first bullet before I compensated for his reaction and movement speed. Hope that this will at least be entertaining and not some good old, but quite boring, practice target shooting." The smile on her face widened a bit in the possibility of an opportunity to use her skills...

"It's mostly about shooting guns", Leona said, "there'll be moving targets, long distance and shot distance and some close combat exercises. I'll explain more about those after you're done wrecking our targets. After that we'll be teaching you the tactics we use, not because they are necessarily better, but because it's nice when everyone is one the same page when you're in a fight. Though that won't be today." Leona walked through a hallway without looking at Renia. There were doors left and right which all looked the same. The only think you could tell about where you were going in these halls were the steps which indicated they were going down. After a few minutes, Leona opened a door on her right and walked in. Inside was a shooting range with all manner of targets. The moving ones Leona had told Renia about as well as stationary ones in all sizes and shapes. The shooting range ended just inside of vision range, meaning the furthest targets were hardly visible at all. In front of the actual range was a small armoury worth of weapons stalled out, though in reality there were only five different kind of guns. a pistol, a rifle, a shotgun, a sniper and a rocket launcher. "We want you to be able to shoot properly with everything but the rocket launcher. 'Properly' means you can hit a target in the right spot in the red zone", Leona pointed at a part of the shooting range where the ground and walls were painted in a bright red. It was about halfway down the shooting range.

"Yeah, they are working on weapons", I'll go figure out what tonight, you know, break in when they leave", the serving lady said in a whispering manner. "No, tonight is not a good night, they'll be on their guard tonight", the hooded man replied flatly. "W-why?", the girl asked, her resolve broken for a moment. She thought she finally had a good plan, the cult didn't respect her since she's new. "You don't need to know...", the man replied.

Alarms were going off everywhere. Both in the science centre and the Defence Force HQ in Scientea. Code Purple, breakout. In the science centre the smell of blood filled the air. If it had happened 10 minutes sooner, the Mayor would have been trapped inside. Instead, it was just the smell of scientist blood that filled the air. In the beginning a few of them had been caught of guard by the undead and quickly devoured as their scream could be heard throughout the building. Now, there was nothing left but a bloody mess. A bone here, a half eaten organ there, the undead had swiftly moved in on their new prey as soon as they sensed it presence, through smell or sound. A few more were killed before the undead were stopped by the lock down. But they would not be for long. The doors of the science centre were not meant to stop the brute force of the undead. If one would stand close enough, they could hear claws slowly working their way through the doors and body smashing into everything that seemed breakable. The heavy breathing and the ghoulish yells. To those trapped inside it must have seemed as if hell had suddenly appeared behind those doors, waiting to swallow up the rest of the building, hungering for fresh blood and motivated by the scent of fear and desperation of their soon to be dessert after dinner...

Alexia was back at her lab when the alarm went off, and she jumped, breaking the test tube she was holding. "Shit." She said, reaching down to pick up the pieces and just cutting herself instead. Deciding to leave it where it was for now, she hurried over to the office joined to her lab, rushing over to the monitor bank. "Shit." She said again, hitting the intercom button. "All personnel, this is a code red. anyone willing and able to, take up arms. Everybody else evacuate immediately. I repeat, evacuate immediately." walking over to an over sized wall safe, she punched in her code, opening the door. Inside were her personal weapons, experiments that had been developed, but were too expensive or dangerous for general production. She stepped out of her office wearing what looked like a flashy Kevlar vest, a pair of ski goggles connected to a backpack, a belt of spherical grenades and holding what looked like a satellite dish attached to a gun.

In her vision the fleeing scientists showed up with a green box around them, and a readout showing their vitals. The Biometric Advanced Targeting System had never had any problems, but the computer was another question. To fit all the necessary computing power into a portable form, they had had to use a light cooling system, meaning that constant use over a few hours would cause the backpack to literally melt down. She didn't plan to be using it for more than an hour though, so she figured it would be fine.

Renia smiled at the armory and said: "All geared up for a small war? Well before I start, I would ask if can I have two free shots with each of the weapons before you start to count my score so I can adjust to each of them?" She walked to the stand and took the pistol first, preferably a H&K 45 or SIG Sauer P22X, and approached the range, while already calculating data in her head. Trough she was ill suited for anything else scientific Snyper cloud easily put a modern ballistics calculation computer to shame and was doing that just now in her head, more to calm herself down then an actual need to check the calculations which she already perfected. She smiled faintly and waited for Leona to both answer her question and give the "begin firing" sign...

~Renia
"We're always armed for a war, though it's a big one rather than a small one", Leona replied. "And yes, you can get those two shots, but after that everything counts, no excuses." Leona stepped back to give Renia the room to shoot and then told her she could start. Leona was eager to see how well the, potentially, new recruit could shoot. Hopefully this one wouldn't be a recruit for long...

~Alexia
Blurred images, faint smells, a big hunger... "Who am I...? I can't remember... I used to be someone... Who was I...?" And just then my conscience drifts away again. It comes and goes. Sometimes I remember things, I remember remembering them, but then the next time I'm 'me', I forgot the things I remembered again. The first time was horrifying. I woke up, that's what I call it, standing over a human body that was torn to shreds, that I tore to shreds. The rest of the time I seem to be somewhere that does not exist. A sort of mental prison. I'm there now. I can think now. When I wake up all I feel is hunger and my senses barely work. I'm getting stronger though. My senses get stronger and so does my control. The hunger is less powerful every time. I'm growing stronger... Soon I'll be in control.

The undead got through the first door they encountered only to find their prey to have fled. Eagerly they hunted them down, blood already dripping down from everywhere on their body. Both their own and their previous victims'. They don't think, they don't feel. They just hunt. They hunt the living with their undead bodies not even caring as their organs slowly rot away or fall out of their bodies. Normal beings would have been paralysed by fear, pain and started puking but these were not normal creatures, these are the undead and there is no living thing that can strike fear in their heart any more.

Ludonear Ferta said ~Renia"We're always armed for a war, though it's a big one rather than a small one", Leona replied. "And yes, you can get those two shots, but after that everything counts, no excuses." Leona stepped back to give Renia the room to shoot and then told her she could start. Leona was eager to see how well the, potentially, new recruit could shoot. Hopefully this one wouldn't be a recruit for long...

Renia took a stand, griping the pistol with both hands and stood in the standard posture for aiming with a single pistol. She aimed at the nearest target and shot once to see how did the pistol behave, hitting a centimeter or so from the center of the target. Then she corrected for the faint differences that it had from the last similar pistol that she held and shoot again this time hitting it with an offset which was incredibly small - less then a millimeter and thous invisible to most humans. Snyper smiled and proceed to shoot for real, her mind now completely aligned with the weapon and targets. A few reloads and lots of cartridges later each target in the field had a hole in itself inside of a centimeter, even in the most distant targets, from it's dead center. Renia said: "Please validate and reset target while I go and grab the shotgun." Renia somehow managed to find a Savage 220F and some high-grade sabot slugs of local origin, hopefully as good or better then the last ones that she had to use. She turned back and approached the firing position ...

Alexia rounded the corner to have her vision filled with red boxes, indicating brain activity but no other life signs. She pressed a button on one of the grenades and tossed it into the center, where the undead stopped and turned towards it. most of them clustered around the Biobomb, which was simulating a living creature, and some even got confused and attacked their companions, but the main purpose of it was to cluster them together and take them out before the battery died. The only real problem with the Biobomb, she reflected as she swung her gun towards the group, was that it gave squeamish people something to complain about, seeing as it contained a real rat's heart.

She took aim and pulled the trigger on her weapon, and almost instantly there was a reaction. Glasses from the dead researchers shattered instantly, and the bones within the zombies soon followed. She kept it going for a few seconds before it overheated and shorted out, forcing her to drop it. Cursing, she threw another Biobomb and ran down a side hall. She kept running, looking for a specific lab. When she found it, she keyed open the door as quickly as possible and took off her vest, putting it on again after getting into her hazmat suit.

"Looks like you get a field test after all," She said to a vial of grey liquid, lifting it gently out of it's cradle. She didn't run to the system control room, because she knew they were all dead if she dropped what she held. Instead she hit a button in the middle of the vest, emitting a counter signal to her own life signs. Now she was all but invisible to the zombies, and she carefully made her way to her destination. She stopped on her way to check that Jojo was still in his cage. It would be bad if he had found his way into the halls when she executed her plan.

In the control room, she sat down at the console and started typing furiously. First she set the sprinkler systems to only activate in rooms where the infected were detected, then she softlocked every door, meaning a scientist with a key code could still get through. Then she input a series of complicated commands that would finilize her plan. Pressing the intercom button, she spoke again.

"Attention. I am initiating a Firebird Protocol. Anybody who cannot escape the building lock yourself in a clean lab until further notice. You have thirty seconds to find safety." And with that she shut down the intercom, turning instead to the fire system access pipe. She opened the hatch and poured the grey fluid into the pipe, then shut it. After the thirty seconds were up, she hit the start button on the computer and watched her handiwork.

From all the sprinkler heads a spray of Project 7 soaked the infected, eating them where they stood. Once all movement in the hallways had ceased, the computer switched to phase two, turning the heat up in the affected areas until it reached 400 degrees Celsius. After the last of Project 7 was burned away, the computer finished its cycle and cooled the building down, all of the cameras showing nothing left but piles of black powder. "Well," Alexia sighed, glancing at the occasional screen of a scientist in one of the safe labs jumping up and down. "I guess that's one use for it."

She took off all of the equipment she had and sat down in the control chair. Her moment of peace was short lived however, as suddenly she was startled by the sound of her own heartbeat and a burning pain all over her body. She screamed and thrashed about, catching the edge of the metal table and crushing it flat, a red haze covering her vision. Her screams turned to incoherent babble as the agony affected her brain, and she fell to the ground writhing. Finally the sweet oblivion of unconsciousness welcomed her, and she didn't get to see the panicked scientists rushing into the room to carry her to bed.

"There attacks need to stop", the Mayor of Grinï spoke calmly to the Mayor of Trinea. Since Trinea still hadn't been attacked, Grinï was under the impression that the 'workers' did not see the need to investigate. Trinea, of course, did see the need. However, they could not provide anything since both the science and the police work required were not in their power to give. This resulted in Grinï thinking Trinea betrayed them since they offered so little cooperation and while the Mayor spoke calmly, his eyes were filled with fury. The Mayor of Scientea wasn't at the meeting, he still had a mess to clean up, and so the two almost warring factions got further and further away from actually working together. With every word spoken, both Mayors felt more and more betrayed by the other.

"So you've planted the fakes", the hooded man spoke to the hooded woman. "Yes", she replied, "the feigned evidence seemed to real I found it hard not to believe myself, since when did you have such a skilled forger at your disposal?" The hooded man laughed: "for much longer than you'd ever expect..."
-The forgeries in question were documents that spoke of betrayal, both by Trinea and Grinï, of course neither was (entirely) true-

Alexia woke slowly to a pounding in her head. As she sat up, she realized the pounding she heard wasn't in her head at all, but was coming from the direction of a mirror on the wall. "I see you're awake Ms. Darkling, " A deep voice boomed from the speaker in the corner. Alexia covered her ears and glared at the two way mirror. "Yes I'm awake, and if I wasn't I most certainly am now. Is it entirely neccassary for you to be that loud?" Surprisingly, the voice obligingly reduced it's volume, though it did correct her.

"The speaker is set at a normal volume. Any heightened output is on your end." Alexia looked up at the mirror, startled, and looked around for the first time. As she took in the stark room, her situation began to make sense. She found herself trying to remember what had happened.

"I went to the control room," she muttered, counting on one hand. "Then I flooded the building with the microbes, then..." as much as she strained, she couldn't remember what had happened next.

"Then you collapsed," The voice supplied, "And were brought here for observation. We couldn't take the risk of leaving you and possibly ignoring an infected, but you are too valuable to simply dispose of. I'm going to ask you a series of questions that-"

Before the voice could even finish Alexia rattled off the list of preaproved answers. She grinned at the mirror sarcastically. "Surprised? Who do you think wrote those questions in the first place? Besides, every answer is true. Except..."

"Except I hear your heartbeat.." as she heard the atendent in the other room scrabbling for the kill switch, she panicked. "Wait!" She shouted, diving towards, and through, the reenforced glass. As the interrogator tried to worm his way into the corner, she looked at him disdainfully.

"I'm not infected." She said simply, turning away from him. "There's no hunger. This is more like..."

She paused for a moment, then turned on the man again. "Give me a clean bill of health," she said with an excited gleam in her eye, "I need to get back to my lab."

Ten minutes later she had managed to convince the interrogator to release her, and was running back towards her lab. She knew it was across the city, but according to the tests Jojo had been able to run as fast as 50 MPH, which meant she could do at least that. "It worked" she shouted gleefully when she burst through the doors of the science building.

Renia again took a single shot which was, relatively speaking, quite of the center, but only because she needed to adjust to the faint difference between each gun and ammo combination. The second free shot was much more accurate, only 9 or so millimeters of the center, quite remarkable considering that it was a shotgun's shot. Soon the targets had been all decimated again, this time the shots were spread out quite further, some were even a dozen of centimeters away from the center, but given the accuracy that shotguns usually displayed it was almost perfect. "Hell it was a long time since I shot a shotgun with sabots, I might have been more accurate with a few more goes, but I believe this is enough. Also this sabot slugs are praise worthy, almost as good as those four ones from who-knows-where which I sent all inside five centimeters of a pretty distant target. I would like to test their stopping power one day too, but that is for some other time, for now reset the targets while I go and grab an rifle." Snyper then proceed to prepare a M1903 Springfield rifle and ammo for it...

"Well, sorry to disappoint you mayor, but it wasn't ready yet." She crossed her arms and glared at him. Where does he get the right to suspect me of anything? She thought, listening to his hammering heart. Ever since I joined this godforsaken facility, I've done nothing but support him, not to mention I just saved the entire building. Arrogant sod.

"Honestly I'm just as surprised as you are," She continued, not letting on to her inner monologue, "I cut myself on a broken vial. I think if I had injected a full dose into myself it would have killed me on the spot. If there's nothing else, I have some new critical research to do at the nearest open microscope."

~Alexia
"Well, I'm sorry to disappoint you", the Mayor replied, "but as you may have noticed with this entire thing going down, professor Darkling, these are not simple times and I honestly don't know who I can trust, so that goes for you as well. I'll believe you for now, but I'm not going to take any chances."

"Whatever," Alexia said, starting to walk towards the labs. "I guess I'm just a better scientist than a politician, but if somebody dedicated their entire career to working under me I would rather give them the benefit of the doubt than point fingers. Seems like a good way to lose allies to me." She cut off further comment by dropping the door between them.

Back in her lab, she was disappointed to see whatever salvageable serum had been left had gotten swept up by the cleaning crews, and sighed. "Guess we're starting over then." She jumped a little at the weight on her shoulders, and smiled as she turned her head to pet Jojo. "At least you'll never accuse me of anything," She said, sitting down at her stool. "Time to get to work," She sighed as she picked up a syringe, only hesitating for a moment before sliding the needle into her arm.