Life Hunter

Arima looked at Tieria "You should leave. Even if the airstrike can destroy the surface, the data contained here and some of the materials can still be recovered. I"ll place the G-Mines to destroy the rest" He said.

Tieria shook her head "I"m okay, I"ll follow you. Can I just ask for a single moment?" She demanded and went to Tiria"s body.

She crouched beside it and grabbed a red colored grenade that was lying there. She calmly put on Tiria"s body before clenching her hands together in front of her chest.

Arima solemnly watched and closed his eyes in respect. After ten seconds, Tieria stepped back and raised her gun. She breathed in and stabilized her aim. She then fired and hit the grenade which exploded in flames, immolating Tiria.

"Let"s go" Tieria uttered just after and turned around with tears in the corner of her eyes. Arima felt quite hurt as she saw her like that. Tiria was his best friend and the member of the squad who accepted him the fastest and always put him at ease. And Tieria was the one that would always be kind and familiar with him. He also started to feel extremely considerate toward her since the moment he started doing missions with her.

It was without saying that Arima felt a huge pain in his heart when one of them died and the other cried just in front of him. It was that day that Arima decided to work even more to protect the ones close to him.

Although Arima was incredibly mature for his age, he was still sixteen. And his vision of human life was still rather undeveloped. He knew that when he killed, it was a for a reason and he could tolerate that. But when he saw people at his side dying, his mind was suddenly shaken, and he felt that sadness for the first time.

He nodded to Tieria while thinking all of that and ran with her toward a spiral corridor that went even more underground. When they reached the end of it, they stumbled upon a thick door of metal.

Fortunately for them, it was open, and they were able to enter quite easily. What was on the other side were oval objects placed in different rows everywhere.

"So that"s the FEBs…" Tieria muttered as she looked at the big objects. Those things were indeed the Fission Eion Bombs. That technology was researched by every big power on the planet, but they always failed to create stable bombs. They could explode, but the explosion itself was truly uncontrollable. It could be as weak as a grenade or even stronger than a nuclear bomb. But there were also cases where the bomb would explode during the manufacturing process.

That"s why most of the powers couldn"t research that weapon wholeheartedly. Princ.i.p.ally because technicians wouldn"t accept to work on something that could kill them. And that"s the reason why the data contained in this facility was so precious since they had made that much FEBs without blowing themselves.

"Don"t touch it though. We can"t predict if those prototypes will explode on us" Arima said and grabbed the case full of G-Mines "Let"s be quick. Things are calm for now, but I don"t want to be suddenly a.s.saulted here" He then began to run all over the place to pose the mines.

Tieria watched a bit amused as she checked the entrance while waiting for him. During his little "marathon", Arima froze when he heard a voice coming from the speakers installed in the entire facility "The quarantine measure has been put into action. The entire building will now be locked. The procedure will take sixty seconds" It finished, and silence returned.

Arima and Tieria looked at each other and cursed at the same time. Arima posed the last mine and detached the handle of the case and brought it with him as he rushed to the exit of this room filled with nukes.

They went up through the spiral corridor and an alarm started ringing as the steel door they just pa.s.sed was now closing automatically. They also heard the shutters close.

Arima didn"t have the choice and carried Tieria as he ran toward the hoist load at maximum speed. Tieria felt pretty awkward as she was simply being carried. But she got over it and now she was blushing; for a completely different reason altogether.

When Arima reached the hoist, he smiled wryly as he saw the whole thing destroyed, but his squad pa.s.sed by here earlier and they placed an electric zip line to go up. Arima and Tieria took it and went to the first floor after a moment. Obviously, every shutter and doors were locked when they arrived.

"Well, s.h.i.t…" Arima let go of Tieria and went to the big door he had destroyed earlier with his rifle, but although it couldn"t close because of that, it had now a steel shutter blocking the pa.s.sage in its stead.

"Tch" Arima clicked his tongue as he drew his pistol and fired behind him at a guy who was about to shoot him.

Tieria looked wide-eyed at the survivor. That guy was stupid; that"s what she thought "What do we do?" She then asked Arima.

Arima mused a little and contacted Jin through his radio. The signal was weak, but it still managed to pa.s.s through "Hey, where the h.e.l.l are you?" Jin"s voice immediately resounded. Arima was about to respond but Jin continued "The airstrike will happen in two minutes! We can"t stop it now! Get out! I can"t release the locks, the system closed itself. Find another exit!"

Arima was speechless, he didn"t say anything as he slapped his face "…I forgot about the airstrike" He muttered and Tieria chuckled and then covered her mouth.

Arima looked at her with dead eyes and grabbed more Eion knives "Stay back" He said and threw the knives at the shutter; the three knives exploded and formed a huge hole on the shutter. After the dust dispersed, Arima went through with Tieria and ended in the long corridor one more time.

He decided to go check the main entrance of this building and could only sigh as he saw that he was a giant steel door. Impossible to break with his a.r.s.enal.

"…Arima, isn"t it strange that some of the people working here seem to have disappeared. Even when we were going back here, we didn"t meet anyone except that stupid guy" Tieria suddenly remarked and Arima exclaimed in understanding.

"You"re right" Arima smiled and left the main entrance with Tieria. He ran toward one of the small rooms and entered. When he saw the Russian guy tied and panicked there, he smirked and cracked his fingers.

"Come on, little guy, give me what I want. I only have a minute to save your life and ours at the same time" He muttered and proceeded to ask the guy for a secret exit. In this situation, it was their best bet.

Arima untied the man and let him run away toward the said exit. They ran back inside the big hall and the guy went to one side and opened a hidden numeric pad on the wall and immediately started to type a code. After he finished, the floor opened, and a staircase was revealed for them

"Good job" Arima smiled and said, before going inside with Tieria, the guy couldn"t do anything except following them. After they went down the stairs, the pa.s.sage closed.

At the end of the stairs, there was one more shutter that had been activated by either the system or one of the people who fled. Arima didn"t lose time as he grabbed the rest of his knives "Sorry, mom" He said wryly and threw them.

The heat and shockwave of the explosion shook them a bit, but they immediately went past the shutter when it was destroyed.

Arima followed the long corridor that was behind and then reached the end. The exit was placed in the forest and some of the other survivors were also there. When they saw Arima and Tieria, they raised their weapon, but the former ignored them as he took Tieria in his arms once more before running away at full speed.

He was already hearing the planes" propellers. When Arima spotted all of the aircrafts, he barely reached the beach. The planes then dropped the bombs and began the airstrike. Their mission was to destroy the surface of this entire island, so the aim was pretty much everywhere. One of the bombs directly fell one the forest behind Arima.

The shock wave struck him from behind, he covered Tieria as he was sent flying into the ocean. After the two fell into the water, Tieria grabbed Arima who seemed to have lost his strength and swam back to the surface.

The squad had located them with the radio and the submarine was already going toward them. When it arrived, Garo and Farro helped Tieria carrying Arima inside. When the latter was finally inside the submarine. He laid his back on the floor and grunted "My back…" He complained, and the squad laughed lightly.

Jin sighed exuberantly "The power of the Eion explosion you took would be enough to kill someone normally. Don"t complain" He said.

Arima smirked and raised the handle of the G-Mines" case "You better dive right now by the way" He declared. Moria"s eyes widened and he told the driver to go down.

Arima managed to sit down on a seat and pushed the b.u.t.ton on the handle. At the same time, the closest G-Mine on the island beeped, then it was the turn of the others like they were sharing the signal.

The ones that were on the first floor had already been destroyed by the airstrike, but the underground of the facility had just been sealed by the ruins. So, the G-Mines placed among the Eion tanks and the FEBs were fully functional.

They all beeped, and two small holes opened on each one of them. Then, gas started to escape the holes at a high rate.

G-Mines are compressed gas tactical mines. They release a great quant.i.ty of explosive gas in the air when they"re activated and fill the area around them with it.

When the mines stopped blowing gas, from the two holes, two small rods appeared. When the two rods touched each other, a spark was produced, and the gas was immediately ignited.

Everything around the mines blew up, the Eion storages cracked and joined the explosion too. But when the mines exploded the place where the FEBs were, something else occurred. When the FEBs cracked, it wasn"t just a new explosion.

From the outside, the ground shook, and a blue light escaped the ruins and illuminated the sky above the destroyed island. And just after, everything burst. The entire island became shrouded by a cyan mushroom cloud.

An unstoppable shock wave spread and pushed the water around, creating a kind of circular tsunami. Fortunately, Fission Eion Bombs don"t release radiation or anything of the sort.

An island just disappeared, miles of water instantly evaporated, a tsunami that probably can destroy a small city was released, and if they"re not lucky, the fact that some many of those bombs exploded at the same time could provoke a true earthquake.

The submarine was also struck by the aftermath although it was already hundreds of meters under water. The people inside grabbed on what they could and sighed in relief when the shaking stopped.

Moria rubbed his eyes and looked at his men "Mission accomplished" He said but no one celebrated about that victory. Too much of their comrades had died for this. They all just started meditating to calm themselves. They thought that, at least, their friends did not die in vain.

Tieria was exhausted mentally and laid her head on Arima"s shoulder who was already asleep. That scene managed to bring smiles to everyone "One is sixteen and the other twenty-one. Guess who is who?" Jin joked on the side and everyone froze.