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easier. If I was doomed, it was too late to turn back.
    He was young…probably too young to even know
what he was securing. I raised my .45 to eye level and walked
slowly, pointing the gun at the soldier’s head. He was leaning
against the wall, a bit hunched over, possibly daydreaming. He
didn’t notice me until I got within twenty feet of him. His eyes
widened, and just as he started to raise his M16, I squeezed the
trigger. A red dot appeared just above his right eye, and brain
matter sprayed out behind him, a slick sheen fanning across the
wall, flowing over the doorframe and marring the door beyond. He
collapsed into the wall with an unnatural thump, sliding to the
ground with a look of shock on his face. The now familiar smell of
freshly rent flesh wafted up to greet me.
    I had had no choice, but excuses didn’t make
it any better. The gore on the wall added a surreal touch, like
this was some horror movie, playing out in a mesmerizing panorama
right before my eyes. Everything was intense. The smell of
gunpowder, the gristle of brain and blood on the wall, the coldly
fixed corpse, the red-blooded warmth of life slowly dissipating
into the belly of some forlorn underground bunker. I had to stop
this. Had to focus on the mission ahead of me. Black and white. No
choice. Kill or be killed.
    Mounted on the wall behind his corpse was a
small box requiring my security key. I slipped it in, the small
bulb blinked green, and the door cracked open. I pushed, extending
my left arm, and there it was in all its glory, the suit I had
studied for so many years. It was floating in a large glass tank,
its black mass limp and lifeless. This must have been some
preservation measure, and they immersed it in fluid thinking it
might decay. Primitives. They don’t have any idea what they’re
dealing with.
    The room was small, a closet. Most of the
space was taken up by the tank, a large cylinder with a rubber hose
sprouting from the metal cap on top and disappearing into a port
behind. A small screen with a keypad was mounted on the wall beside
the tank. It probably had something to do with the receptacle, but
that didn’t really matter. After they buried the suit here, I
didn’t follow up on it. I was sure this was all bureaucratic
bullshit aimed at preserving something they had no clue about. I
needed something to break the glass with. I glanced down at the
lifeless guard, the finger his right hand rigidly caressing the M16
trigger. I scooped up the gun, flipped it around, and smashed the
glass with the butt. There was a loud noise, and the gun bounced
out of my hands, the momentum throwing me backwards.
    Fuck, I wasn’t prepared for this. I dropped
the M16, pulled my .45 out of its holster, and fired at the
cylinder. The bullet punched a hole through the tank, bounced off
the suit, exited, and lodged itself in the wall to my right. That
was way too close, and it left me feeling thick-headed. Fluid
poured out of the two new holes, but the glass held. My mind was
racing, trying to come up with a solution. I walked over to the
wall- mounted console and tapped at the keyboard. It lit up, and in
green letters asked me for a password. Goddamnit! I glanced around,
but nothing popped into my mind. I crawled behind the cylinder.
With my back against the wall and using my feet as a lever, I
strained against the glass. Nothing. Maybe if I crawled up higher?
I shuffled up the wall, feet clumsily skipping up the glass, and
tried again. This time it moved slightly. I climbed higher and
tried again, gritting my teeth, narrowing my eyes, and pressing
with all my strength.
    The cylinder slowly tipped. Falling forward,
it crashed onto the ground with a loud thump, the sudden loss of
perch dropping me to the floor in a gruff collapse of flailing
limbs. I scrambled to get my footing, but to no avail. I landed in
a partial squat that succeeded only in softening the blow to my
ass. Letting loose with a string of expletives, I instantly
regretted the