Helion

Helion was divided by two rivers: the Manifold, which flowed from the north, and the Smithson, which flowed from the west. Both rivers converged to form the Eastbank River, which ran southeast towards the coast some thousand miles away. The treatment facility sat on the north bank of the Eastbank portion of the rivers.

Eve had always hated the naming convention, and there had been multiple petitions to have it renamed, but Duke Eastbank, the surviving heir of the Eastbank legacy, had all but crushed their efforts through several well-funded PR campaigns. Now, all Helionites had to begrudgingly accept that the Eastbank River had addresses like 240 Eastbank, Eastbank Drive.

“You'd think they'd have at least used a different name for the streets, right? Like, I get it, but c’mon.” Cassidy spat on the ground as they walked through the side streets. Pale dawn light reflected off the turbulent surface of the river as it peeked out between buildings.

“Don't tell me you have something against the proud and Nobel Duke?!” Carmine feigned indignation as she followed behind Cassidy.

“No, no! Not at all! Given half the chance, I'd wrap myself around his face like it was a custom-built Sybian machine. I just think the names are dumb.”

Jasper piped up from the rear of the group, using her subordinate whiteboi to avoid bags of trash and littered alcohol bottles. “I hate to be the one to break this to you, Cassidy, but if you have a problem with the names, then you have a problem with the Men. They're part and parcel; it's all a part of Helion's history, and spurning one means you spurn both, so hold your tongue.”

Cassidy grumbled as they made their way closer to the treatment facility; it was only a block and a half ahead, and the vibration of its great turbines could be felt through the soles of their boots. The faint hissing of steam and pressure built as the street merged into a ringed service road that ran the circumference of the property. Across the street lay a barren waste of concrete and chain link fence, meant to bar entry to riffraff and hooligans. Eve turned to address the group.

"Well, this is where we say our goodbyes, for now. You all know your goal and your role, so stick to the plan and slaughter any that stand in your way. I… I hate to say this, and... it's been weighing on my mind since we left the restaurant, but Black Kings are working in this cult. I shot the two that pursued Jasper out of the building, and while I know they're fine... I also know I'd have a hard time doing that again. Prepare yourselves for the possibility.”

The girls looked at each other with unsettled expressions. “I understand if you can't bring yourself to do it. I get it; trust me. But if we want to see Helion survive, then we simply cannot afford to be stopped. We just can't. It… fuck… it kills me to say this, but if they try to stop me, I won't let them take me. This is just too important!” Eve was crying openly as she addressed the women, pain ripping through her heart at the thought of what she needed to accomplish.

"This... needs to be done by any means necessary. I'm sure you all understand that after connecting with your children. Having one of those gods summoned or beckoned, or whatever the fuck the cult is trying to do, will rip Helion to pieces. So, if a king tries to stop you, please don't let them.” Eve buried her face in her hands, and the girls huddled around her.

“I can't promise I won't have a soft heart for them, Eve. But I do know what you're saying. We'll do what we can to make this a success, alright?” Cassidy broke away from the hug, blushing lightly at the uncharacteristic tenderness. “‘Sides, we don't have to kill 'em; we can just knock 'em out, right? They can take some lumps and bumps! Hell might even make us more attractive to them!”

Her positivity cut the tension, and Eve chuckled through her tears. “Thanks, Cas. That makes me feel better about this; you're right.”

Carmine and Jasper both looked at Cassidy with awe in their eyes. “What?! I can be nice! I care! Eve was having a hard time, so I thought I'd speak up. You got a fuckin’ problem?!” She threw her hands across her chest and swore softly to herself under her breath.

"Nah, you're good; I just figured you'd have put it a little more... inelegantly… is all." Carmine smirked at the bitter woman before pulling Eve in for a kiss. “We'll make it happen. Just focus on not dying, and we'll see you at the stairs, alright? Oh, and their encryptions are a little more sturdy than I anticipated. I'll try to hammer through it as quickly as I can, but if things start taking more than a few seconds, just use your color to get through. I've suppressed their alarms, so even if they hit the panic button, emergency services shouldn't roll in immediately.”

Eve looked up into the artificial eyes of her lover. She honestly didn't know what she would do if it weren't for Carmine; she’d likely be dead already, or worse. She owed Carmine a great debt that she would probably never be capable of repaying, but she had to try. “We need to hammer out some details after this is over, alright? Cas, get that fence open, and let's go; we have work to do.” Cassidy dashed across the street and extended her Gladius from the mechanical recess of her forearm.

It whispered through the steel mesh like it was passing through strands of paper, four rapid slashes, and a person-sized hole flopped to the ground at Cassidy's feet. She was through and off towards the main entrance of the building without so much as a glance back. “Always so eager for violence, that one! Jasper strode past Eve and Carmine on her way to the west side of the building, a small hoard of beaten and battered whitebois in tow.

Eve sprang onto her tippy toes before planting a passionate kiss on Carmine's lips. “Go get ’em, tiger!” And then she took off, sprinting across the street and through the fence.

Carmine called after her, somewhat bewildered, “Wait! What details?”

Eve waved and shouted back. “The details of our wedding! Duh!”

Carmine's mouth fell open as she gaped at her rapidly shrinking partner. Eve sprinted across the concrete towards the squat brick of a building. The gap between the fence and the side of the building was only about 100 feet and was free of any obstacles to slow her advance. Jasper was heading the long way around, having her hoard scout the path ahead for her as she sauntered casually towards her destination. With her build, any sort of rapid approach wouldn't be happening.

Eve slammed into the south wall by an unmanned door; the lock beeped, and a little LED panel beside the door turned green. Just as Eve grabbed the handle to yank it open, Carmine sailed overhead and crunched into the side of the building. She glanced down, winked, and then vaulted onto the roof to continue to the north entrance.

“Fucking show-off…” Eve pulled the door open and slipped into the treatment facility. The room she found herself in was brightly lit and lined with locker banks. Benches were bolted to the floor running down the center of the room in both directions; it vaguely reminded her of a pool change room. The tiles on the floor ran up the walls before terminating into painted drywall.

The scent of perfume and flora wafted through the air as she stepped past the first alcove of lockers. Not a single hint of masculine musk hung in the air, and she scoffed. Obviously, the black quarters were housed in a separate part of the building, if they even had any. As she cleared the second bank, she came across a solitary white boi getting changed.

It froze in mid-motion as it made eye contact with her. It had just been pulling up its pants around a chastity cage when she'd come across it. The bitchboi had been on HRT for some time as its chest swelled noticeably with natural breasts, and a small spade locket dangled from its neck, matching the small spade tattoo above its cage. This one was likely owned and in the process of being feminized.

“Don't move or speak unless I tell you to, understood?” The cunt nodded as it remained frozen in place, clearly terrified. “Are you owned?” It nodded again. “How long have you been transitioning?”

It swallowed hard before shakily replying, "F-f-four years, mistress!”

Eve assessed its body once more. The feminine curves had come in strong, and a narrow waist bled down into wide birthing hips. Its breasts had grown significantly to fill the bra it wore, probably a b or c cup.

"Are you a woman?”

The creature's cheeks flushed as it responded sheepishly.

"Yeah, mistress, ever since I can remember..."

Eve swore under her breath. A strong distinction had been made since well before the Race War had ever begun. Some women were simply born with the wrong body and needed to be held to a separate standard from the average whiteboi. Transitioning helped to separate them from the rest of the filth, but over the past century, the white race had slid so far into femininity that it had become difficult to tell at a glance who was a woman and who was just a whiteboi.

Carrying the spade symbol was typically a right only allowed for women, so the fact this bitch had them prominently displayed meant Eve couldn't just arbitrarily execute her. “It's your lucky day, fellow snowbunny. Best get your shit together and get the fuck out of here. Bad things are about to go down, and if you stick around, I'll be forced to do some shit I don't want to do. Are we clear?”

The woman stared blankly at Eve with the distinctive look of a street rat staring into headlights. “That means now, you dumb cunt! Get! On the dou-”

Eve was cut off as distant gunfire erupted from the direction Cassidy had headed. The noise seemed to jostle the snowbunny out of her stupor, and she hurriedly tossed a leather jacket over top of her bra before ripping a gym bag out of her locker.

“W-what’s happ-”

Eve cut the woman off by howling at her, “I SAID FUCK OFF, GET THE FUCK OUT BEFORE I BRAIN YOU!”

She brandished her Deckland at the woman to emphasize her point, and the fledgling Queen of Spades bolted for the door.

“God damnit, Eve... always a big fuckin’ softie for no fuckin’ reason. ‘If iT’s WhItE kIlL iT’ my ass... Ugh," Eve berated herself as she continued to clear out locker bank after locker bank.

She had a soft spot for women, and seeing that girl just going about her day with the spades hanging from her body, she couldn't bring herself to harm her. If it had been a white boi, though... Eve gritted her teeth as she continued forward. They'd come in during an active shift since the staff entrance was barren of life beyond the sole woman she'd bumped into so far.

She breathed a sigh of relief as the entrance to the rest of the building came into sight on the other side of the showers. Three of the stalls lining the walls were occupied, and Eve raised her pistol to put rounds in each before she froze. What if there was another woman like the one she'd just encountered in them? She couldn't just... “Ah FUCK! EVERYONE OUT OF THE SHOWERS, NOW, GET OUT! OUT! OUT! OUT!”

She screamed at the top of her lungs, and the alarmed occupants scrambled out of the showers. None were caged, and none had any spade iconography anywhere on their bodies, so Eve terminated them before moving to the entrance. Cracking open the door, she peered down the long stretch of hall off to the right. No alarms and no warning lights indicated that Carmine was still doing her work on the building; otherwise, they'd be ankle-deep in city guards by now. Poking her head out, she cleared the left side of the hall before stepping out completely.

A sign was posted on the opposite side of the corridor, which laid out the building's infrastructure; a small ‘you are here' arrow indicated her current position. Tracing a finger along the halls, she located the stairs leading to the lower levels and headed right. There were three doors between her and the corner of the hallway, and she knew she would need to clear each one before proceeding.

The first door to her left was locked; giving the door a solid donkey kick freed it from the jam, and it swung limply open on its hinges. Peering into the supply closet yielded nothing of interest, so she proceeded. The second door to the right had a sign over it saying 'cafeteria'; it was open, and loud chatter emanated from within. Calming her breath and focusing, she unslung her rifle and readied it against her shoulder before stepping around the door.

Twenty whitebois sat in the galley, eating and pondering the noises coming from the other side of the building. The stupid cunts had the survival instincts of fucking lemmings, though Eve supposed what they were doing was probably smarter than wandering towards the noise. In her cursory glance over the bobbing heads and shuffling bodies, she spotted two women. One at the far back, leaning on a wall, seemingly absorbed in her phone.

The case sported a massive Black Cock surrounded by small spades; her wrist holding the phone also had small spade charms dangling off it on a bracelet that read "Black-owned." The second woman was at one of the tables, surrounded by losers; she was collecting money from them, judging by the wad of cash in her fist. She currently had one of the whitebois by the throat and had the fist with the cash in it raised threateningly towards its face.

She, too, had spade charms around her wrist; however, her bracelet read “BBC Slut” instead. Everyone froze as Eve came through the door with the rifle raised. The first whiteboi to react tried to stand and bolt for a 'staff-only' door towards the back of the room; it caught a bullet to the base of its skull and dropped like a sack of hammers.

The shot spurred everyone into motion, and the room exploded into chaos. Eve opened up, pulling the trigger as fast as she could line up shots, prioritizing keeping the faggots from escaping. Body after body hit the floor as she swiveled her gun across the room. The first Whitegirl who'd been holding her phone now had it up to her ear as though calling someone; Eve couldn't allow that, not yet.

Taking great care not to strike the woman, Eve shot the phone out of her hand and continued to mow down the defenseless whitebois. It took her all of 40 seconds to clear the room, save for the two women, who were now thoroughly shitting their pants.

“W-what the fuck do you want?! Are you going to kill us too?!” The woman, whose phone now lay scattered across the floor in a thousand pieces, shook out her hand while glaring at Eve.

“You need to leave the building. I don't know if you're caught up in the cult or not, but after I'm done here, it won't exist, so I don't care. Just get the fuck out. The only reason you're still alive is because you aren't one of them.” Eve shifted her head slightly to regard the corpse of a particularly small whiteboi.

The second woman popped up from under the table she'd been using to hide from the gunfire. “W-what cult? I never heard of it! Gabby, grab your shit, let's go!” Gabby looked around the room and nodded silently. Walking over to the second woman, they gathered up their bags and started heading back towards the locker room.

“Thanks for not killing us... and thanks for not lumping us in with that trash.”

Eve grimaced in place of a smile. She knew she shouldn't be letting them go, but she just couldn't bring herself to murder innocents like that, and she couldn't bring them along with her, so this was her only option. “Keep the real faith, sisters; your spades saved you today.”

Gabby clutched at her wrist and offered a soft prayer to their black God before following the other woman out of the room. The pseudo-religion that had spawned from the establishment of the BNWO was one of the longest-surviving religions across the Free Cities. While no churches had been established, and no saints had been heralded, it thrived among the snowbunny population regardless.

It was a silent religion, more or less, with its devotees offering prayer in the form of spreading their legs instead of reciting hymns in wooden pews. It had managed to survive the heretical purges exclusively based on its inclusivity; so long as you were a woman, you could practice the gospel. Eve had dabbled in it, going so far as to have an intricate spade mark inked into the small of her back, but outwardly displaying the mark of her personal, Black God often interfered with her work.

Coming across as an indoctrinated whore for Black men made whitebois more aggressive and difficult to interrogate, lowered the amount of respect she got from Black men and women, and made other lower-class women far too chummy with her. In any other instance, these issues would have been perfectly acceptable, but she needed the ability to slide into various social roles on a whim depending on what her job demanded, and being seen as a worshiping snowbunny made it difficult, if not impossible, in many instances.

Even still, Eve believed in the religion. It made perfect sense to her that God was Black and that the Black Race had been put on earth to lead the others into a bright and utopian future. The existence of other, different gods only served to galvanize her belief that there was truly a Black God and that her service to it was just and noble. Seeing the other women flaunt their dedication to their faith caused Eve to regret not accepting the path of the snowbunny more fully.

Once this was over, she would correct that. But until then, she had a building to clear. Two of the white bois she'd shot were moaning, so she stomped on their throats before making her way to the kitchen. It sat on the other side of two saloon-style doors, and after passing through them, she could hear the pathetic whimpering of a terrified person hiding in some cupboards under the food preparation bench.

Sighing, she asked the person to come out, “N-no! It's not safe! I don't want to die!”

The voice was identifiably masculine but had an effeminate wilt to it that made it hard to tell if it belonged to a woman or a whiteboi. “I don't have time for you to be a pussy; get out or you're going to die trapped in a fucking cupboard!”

The person yelped and then scrambled out. It peered up at her, following the barrel of her rifle to her face. "P-please, mistress, I've got-”

Eve put two rounds through its head and then moved on to the 'staff only’ door. Booting it open revealed a small office belonging to the cafeteria staff. A portly woman sat at the desk, hands clasped in silent prayer, a spade dangling from around her neck. She looked to be somewhere in her early forties, and as Eve came in, she snapped her head up to lock eyes with her. “Are you going to kill me, too?”

Eve shook her head, “Get out of the building; bad shit’s going down, and you don't want a part in it.”

The woman rose, adjusting her pencil skirt and straightening her glasses. “I won't forget this; can I have your name?”

Eve lifted an eyebrow but responded, “It's Eve.”

The woman waited, anticipating more, but when nothing came, she nodded. “Thank you, sister; I'll not forget your compassion.”

A genuine smile touched Eve's lips this time but failed to make its way to her eyes. “Just get out of here.”

With that, she turned and made her way back out to the hall, crossing the small sea of blood and brain matter that now thoroughly coated the cantina floor. The last door along the hall was marked "Laundry,” and as she opened the door, two wild-eyed whitebois sprang out from either side of the entrance.

The one to the right of the door managed to land a limp-wristed punch to her chin as it came around the wall. They had heard the gunshots from down the hall and had been anticipating this. Taken off guard, Eve stepped back to clear the distance between them, and as she did, the white boi to the left swung haphazardly with the handle of a mop, but the blow whistled past her side and slapped against the floor.

Eve snatched the wrist of the first white boi and snapped it like a bundle of dried twigs. The crackle of the exploding bone tickled her ears as the whelp began to howl in anguish. The second whiteboi had started to lift the mop for a second strike, but Eve clamped a hand around the wooden shaft and snapped that, too.

She twirled the splintered end in her hand and then drove it into the eye socket of the whiteboi with a broken wrist. The tip exploded out of the back of its head, and she released its arm as she spun to square up on the other whiteboi, now wielding half a mop. It held the cleaning tool up defensively, attempting to shield itself behind the thin piece of wood. Eve observed it as it cowered before her like a shaking piglet.

It was barely over 5’5 and probably weighed under 100lbs. Its scraggly blonde hair had never been cut professionally, and its smooth, unblemished skin was as pale as snow. Eve was struck by how utterly repulsive the creature was, and her mind boggled that there had ever been a time in the distant past when anyone could have considered this a man.

It was like looking at some kind of museum display. Some ancient vestige of a past so far removed from her own time that it may as well have been alien. Its soft, blue eyes were wet with tears, and she felt another surge of bile fighting its way up from her stomach. She hated this creature; rather than feeling any pity or sympathy, all she could muster for the pathetic little bitch in front of her was a pure, unrefined rage.

It sickened her that this waste of resources shared genetics with her, and it enraged her that these gutless little gremlins had been even the smallest bit responsible for her ancestry. Those round, blue eyes reflected the animalistic grin on Eve's face as she lunged at it, brushing aside the mop handle and clasping its head in both her hands. It screamed as it toppled over backward with Eve on top of it.

Using its ribs as a cushion for her knees, she dug her thumbs into its eyes, pushing until the satisfying ‘pop’ registered from both orbs. It was wailing like a dying cat, but she continued to push, feeling the hard barrier of the skull at the back of its sockets attempt to stop her thumbs from scrambling its brain. “Fucking die! Die! Diediediediediedie!” She beat its head against the concrete floor until the bones of its skull separated in her hands.

The wet slapping of its brain against the hard surface was interrupted by a startled gasp, and Eve spun. Another pair of whitebois had wandered down the hall from some other area of the facility, either to get to the locker room or to investigate the gunfire still rattling through the walls from the main entrance. Eve released the dismantled skull of her victim and rose before the utterly bewildered whitebois.

Blood and viscera dripped from the ends of her fingers as she stepped out into the hall, cutting off their path to the lockers. Eve tensed her muscles, and just as she was ready to pounce, Cassidy broke in over her commtag. “Uhhhhh guys? I hate to do this to you, and I know y’all are having a good time or whatever, but your girl could use some assistance here. Hitting my limits with this rainbow shit. Suckin’ the wind outta me somethin’ fierce. A little help would go a long way."

The whelps in front of Eve turned and began to flee down the hall, screaming as though their lives depended on it. “Carmine, who's closest to Cas?”

There was a brief pause, and then Carmine chimed back, “That's you, baby; make it snappy; Jasper and I are almost done with the stairs to the lower levels.”

Eve watched the retreating whitebois and cursed, "I wasted too much damn time. Fuck! Hold on, Cas, I'm coming.”

Cassidy chortled back over the comm and snorted a joke: “Jeez, I like beatin’ on whitebois as much as the next lady, but no need to get that worked up!”

Despite her chipper tone, the exhaustion in her voice was evident. She was flagging fast and would likely be forced to retreat if Eve didn't get her hustle on. She'd be wading into some substantial resistance up ahead, so she deployed her helmet and took off down the hall at a dead sprint.

Carmine had tagged the route to the main lobby, and doors blurred by as Eve flew past them. She encountered four white bois in her mad dash, and each was rewarded with a swift bullet to the chest as she loped past them. A final door barred the path to the main lobby, and, bracing her arms across her chest, she collided with it so forcefully that it was torn clear off its hinges.

Eve, along with the door, skidded to a stop in what turned out to be the upper atrium. It ran in a semicircle across the back wall of the lobby, overlooking the main entrance. Bringing herself up from her crouched slide, Eve took in the chaotic scene. 30 armed guards were leaning against the railing, showering the room below with small arms. She couldn't take the time to look down over the railing before the guards closest to her turned their heads to inspect the noise of her entrance.

She was on the first one immediately, shoving her pistol into its chest and pulling the trigger before twirling around its body and hitting the next guard in the neck with a high kick. She dove low to avoid a blow from the third guard and put two rounds into its thigh, emptying her magazine. Flinging the spent mag out to the side with a flip of her wrist, she seamlessly fed a new one into the base of the deckland and racked the slide.

The fourth and fifth guards were aiming at her as she brought her gun up, and she dove to the side while letting off three rounds. Chips of concrete and paint flecked off her helmet as their shots dug into the ground where she'd been crouched, and she leveraged herself off the wall to regain her forward momentum. Guards six through eleven were now turning to regard her, and the rest looked like they were soon to follow.

This would give Cassidy a chance to regroup and catch her breath. Eve dumped her magazine down the line of guards before reholstering the pistol and swinging out her rifle. Simultaneously, she dropped to a knee and slid across the ground until she came to rest behind a decorative concrete pillar jutting from the wall. Flicking the little selector switch on the slide assembly from single fire to fully automatic, Eve let loose. A hail of high-caliber rounds shredded the guards across the railing, blood geysered over the edge, and a few of the useless souls followed soon after.

Hearing the distinctive ‘click’ coming from the gun as the rounds exploded out of it, Eve recognized the end of the magazine was coming up fast. 10 guards remained, and they were scurrying for cover at the far end of the walkway. Taking the opportunity, Eve ejected the magazine and seated a new one in its place. Racking the bolt back, she set it up once more, only for a small steel orb to skitter to a stop at her feet.

Without even thinking, Eve dove off the balcony to the lower level, tucking and rolling as she hit the floor to try to dissipate the force of deceleration. A concussive blast tore the walkway above her apart, and shards of concrete, glass, and metal pelted the unprotected parts of her body as she scrambled to reach the cover from which Cassidy was waving. The woman was sweating profusely based on the sheen of exposed skin Eve could see, and the dull shimmer of her rainbow faded the second Eve reached her.

“I like what you've done with the place!” Eve sidled up next to Cassidy, who had retracted her helmet to help get more air into her lungs.

“Thanks! Interior decorator...huff... was a fan of Swiss cheese; how many...huff... did you get?”

Eve shook her head, “I dunno, maybe 20 or so, wasn't counting.”

Cassidy swore and peeked over the top of the concrete kiosk, only to be greeted by more gunfire. “How many of those grenades do you think they have?"

Eve didn't have time to punch Cassidy in the face for jinxing them before another steel orb hit the glass window in front of them.

"OH, SHIT HOLD-" Cassidy had put a hand on Eve's shoulder and had yanked her into a half-standing position as the explosive detonated. Eve and Cassidy were flung across the foyer by the blast, colliding into the back wall and falling to the ground in a crumpled heap.

Eve groaned as the shimmering rainbow dissolved off her body. "Cas, are you good? Get off me, you heavy bitch.”

The ringing in her ears made it hard for her to know if Cassidy had heard what she said. Cassidy coughed as she rolled off of Eve; even through the muffled state of her ears, Eve could tell that it sounded wet. Grabbing Cassidy's arm, Eve hauled them both up against a cement column to try to shield them from cultists, who were no doubt trying to get a firing angle on them.

“How bad is it? lemme see.” Eve turned to Cassidy to inspect her, only to find several pieces of shrapnel stapling her body armor to her torso. “Ah fuck, c'mon, Cas, be a big girl for me!” Eve started ripping hunks of metal out of Cassidy's body; the meaty 'shick' of metal sliding across flesh and bone unnerved Eve, but she knew if Cas was going to heal, she needed to get the foreign objects out quickly.

Eventually, Cassidy's body would eject the steel on its own, but that took time they didn't have. Eve just hoped they hadn't damaged Cassidy's implants to the point of rendering them inoperable. “God damnit, Cas, help me out here. Where's the worst of it?!”

Cassidy coughed up another lungful of blood as a hand lazily drifted to a small pinhole in her body armor right above her heart.

“Fuck, shit fuck!” Eve tore at the chest piece's straps, ripping it free of Cassidy's body as she heard shouts coming from the other end of the lobby. A small bullet-sized hole had punctured the vest Cassidy had on, as well as the suit jacket and undershirt. It left a neat little hole in her chest, roughly half an inch above her heart. “Musta just caught your lung; come on, we need to move; get up!”

Eve threw Cassidy's body armor around her neck and then flung one of her arms across her shoulders. Shakily, they both stood and began to hobble towards the closest door. Eve heard, “There they are! Found ‘em! Guys, over here!” Before a stinging hot pain lanced through her calf, then her thigh. She shoved Cassidy into the door, which swung open enough for her to collapse inside.

Eve spun and reached for her deckland, only to find it was missing, likely thrown clear of her holster when she and Cassidy were sent flying by the grenade. Another round caught her in the liver, and she crumpled to the floor just outside the door. "Guys, we're in trouble. They were using explosives." A round dug through her shoulder and laid her flat on her back.

This was it. Some shitty little fuckwit was going to walk up to her and put a fucking round through her heart. She wasn't going to die at the hands of some long-forgotten god or between the legs of a Black man; she was going to die at the hands of subhuman filth. Like mother, like ********... The corona of colors coursing around her mother's face sparked a thought for her.

If she coated her body, as Cassidy had, then could she turn any of the bullets that struck her into other things? On contact? Did it work that quickly? Moving as fast as a bullet, there was a chance whatever the bullet turned into could be more harmful. But if it could save her from dying an inglorious death, she had to try.

A stream of color flowed up around her body on the side closest to the shooters, swarming over her injured leg and abdomen. Another bullet slammed into her ass cheek and exploded into a plume of smoke. Eve reached for the rifle slung across her back. A bullet caught her forearm and splattered a glob of jello across it. She winced in pain as her arm was jerked violently by the impact, but was able to grab the butt of her gun.

Turning, she brought the weapon around just in time to see two more cultists step out of the open door across the lobby. She gritted her teeth as two bullets ricocheted off her helmet and into the wall behind her; a third caught her in the stomach; and a cloudy puff of down feathers sprang into the air. She pulled the trigger, and the first cultist dropped in a spray of bullets; the second and third ducked back behind the door for cover. “Oh no, you fucking don't!” Eve screamed.

She fed her rainbow into her bullets and fired again; the door melted into a puddle of fondue cheese. The two baffled cultists looked down at it in sheer amazement before being dropped by another spray of fire. Eve inched her way back towards the door Cassidy had fallen through, shuffling herself along with her good leg, aim locked on the doorway with two bodies in it.

“Just a bit further, c’mon Eve, just another five feet, you can do this, come on.”

Two more goons poked their heads out from the doorway and sprang back in as Eve shot at them. She felt her shoulder bump into the door jam and readjusted her course to get her through the door, but it was shut. She pushed against it with her back, but it wouldn't budge. She couldn't understand what was happening, but then a set of arms scooped under her armpits and dragged her into the hallway.

“FUCKING CULTISTS, I’LL KILL YOU! I'LL KILL YOUR ENTIRE FUCKING FAMILIES, YOUR PETS, I'LL FUCKING SLAUGHTER YOUR INFANT CHILDREN, YOU FUCKING PIECES OF SH-,” but she cut off abruptly as Carmine stared down at her. She looked to the side to see Cassidy, barely conscious, lift a Tellmin's to her lips before lighting it. Jasper stood behind Carmine, bullet holes present in her dress. “Oh, hey, baby. Long time, no see.”

Eve retracted her helmet, and Carmine snapped an eyebrow up before responding, “Sorry, did I interrupt something? It sounded pretty heated. Did you want to go back out there?”

Eve chuckled before collapsing back into a supine position. "Ughhhh, my everything fucking hurts.”

“Speak for yourself; I got lit up like a fuckin’ whore house out there. My bruises have bruises! And you're welcome, by the way, for saving your stupid ass from that explosion.”

Eve groaned again before flopping her forearm across her brow and flipping off Cassidy. “And you're welcome. I dragged your ass into the hall, bitch.”

Jasper hit her vape and then cleared her throat. “Ahem, yes, well, I'm glad we're all bonding so deeply and all, but... I do want to remind you that we've got somewhere to be at the moment.”

Cassidy and Eve turned to her in unison and said, “Get fucked, Jasper.”

The combination of their two voices coming out at once caused Carmine to begin laughing. Cassidy was close behind but struggled to do so without coughing up blood. Eve could barely move as her body worked on ejecting the bullets lodged in her thigh and liver. Thankfully, her calf and shoulder had been pass-through shots and didn't need to be worked out. Footsteps echoed on the other side of the door, and the four women all instantly had their weapons drawn and pointed at it, ready for whoever was on the other side to attempt a breach.

A voice called out, “Nah, Nate, let's go around. They're probably locked and loaded on the other side; I don't want to die and-" The voice trailed off as it moved away from the door and into the lobby.

“Well, that cuts down on our break time. Eve, how much longer do you think you'll need? Cas, same question.” Jasper gingerly sat next to Cassidy and took another hit of her vape.

Eve groaned, “Just… ugh, gimme like two solid minutes, please. I'm runnin’ on empty right now. I haven't had a chance to eat anything beyond Black cum and piss. I even passed through their fuckin’ kitchen, too.”

Cassidy took a long pull from her smoke and prodded at the bullet wound in her chest. “I'm fucked for at least another five. That bitch musta clipped my aorta or something, ‘cause I was on death's door, no doubt about it.”

Carmine frowned as she slid to the floor next to Eve, holding out a pre-lit smoke for her to take. “This, like, totally fucking blows. I'll see if I can buy you girls some time to recover, but our push for the stairs is, like, actually fucked now.”

Eve puffed on her smoke. “Nah, we can lock down the hall if you want to run to the kitchen and nab us some grub. Getting those calories into us would be a huge boost. Even vending machine bullshit would be better than nothing right now.”

Cassidy and Jasper agreed enthusiastically, and Carmine sighed, “Alright, one order of ‘whatever-I-can-carry’ coming right up!” And then she was off, down the hall and out of sight, before Eve could even say goodbye.

“She's a spritely sort, isn't she?” Jasper closed her eyes, traveling somewhere else for a moment. “Ah, three whitebois closing in down the left hall. Guns up, ladies.”

Cassidy and Eve groaned as they brought their weapons up. “Fuck, you know what'd be good right now? A fuckin’ Donaire! Nice juicy meat, tons of cheese, and sweet sauce... ugh, what I wouldn't give to wrap my lips around that shit right now!” Cassidy licked her lips as the first white boi poked its head around the corner up the hall. Eve was the first to fire, and the whitebois skull popped like a cherry tomato.

Screams and shouts came from the other two whitebois as Jasper's scouts jumped them. “Fuck, that reminds me of this hole-in-the-wall down on Fleet Street; the owner is this gargantuan Jamaican stud. Think the place was called Malo's...? Anyway, I stumbled in there one night after a job, and that fucker almost turned me inside out on his cock. No joke, that snake must have been three solid inches across.”

Cassidy and Jasper both gasped. “You're a fuckin’ liar!” Cassidy pointed at Eve with an accusatory finger.

“I swear on my spade, it was every fraction of a solid three, not quite long enough to hit my off switch, but my fuck did he stretch me out. Served up a mean bammy, too. Highly recommend it.” Cassidy’s hand dipped slightly.

“Hol’ up, you're rockin’ a spade? Since when? Why didn't you say anything?”

Eve was taken aback by Cassidy's interest. “I-I dunno? It never came up, and I didn't think it was that big a deal."

There was a twinkle in Cassidy's eyes that hadn't been there before, some new-found perspective that had been revealed to her.

“Well, sh*t, I didn't know you were a sister. We should celebrate after this is done. How ‘bout you, Jasper?”

Jasper looked between them and scoffed. “As if I'd be caught dead in public with you two outside of business, please, I have standards.”

Cassidy looked like she was about to lunge for the disheveled woman before Jasper continued, “That being said, I may be persuaded to join you for a night at a private club, one with a booth, preferably.” This caused Cassidy to come up short of moving, and she lowered her fist.

“Jeez, there's ‘professional bitch’ and then there's you. We need to work on those social skills ‘cause right now you're so far up your ass a horse would have a hard time diggin’ you back out.”

Jasper chuckled, and the sound of it sent tingles running down Eve's spine. “Well, if you're ever interested in earning some creds, you know I'll have a job just. for. you." Jasper blew a kiss at Cassidy, which caused the redhead to sputter.

Before Cassidy could respond, Carmine came barreling down the hall with a large duffle bag in hand. The three women cheered her return, and the moment the bag touched the floor, they tore into it with abandon. Premade sandwiches, cookies, cola, flavored water, candies, fruits, and vegetables all disappeared into their hungry mouths as they gorged themselves. Carmine looked on with an expression of mild disgust.

“Remind me to feed you before you go down on me, okay? It feels like I'd end up the subject of one of those ‘true crime' documentaries based on what I'm seeing here.”

Eve looked up at her and licked her lips clean of the egg salad that had been smeared across them. "Whaf? Founfs life a foof fime foo me.”

Carmine rolled her eyes. “I know, for a fact, I don't need to tell you to swallow, bitch. God! You can be so gross.”

Eve just grinned lecherously before biting back into the sandwich.

Carmine huffed before leaning against the wall, “So, what? We just... rush the stairs? Our little ‘divide and conquer’ plan didn't work out.”

Eve swallowed her food before replying, causing Carmine to mouth a brief ‘thank you’, “That's pretty much it. You and Jasper handle threat detection; Cassidy leads the charge, and I make sure we don't get shot in the ass. We move as a fortified unit until we hit the stairs, and then we marathon our way through the lower levels. Hopefully, we managed to thin out a decent number of them, and we don't get overwhelmed.”

Cassidy picked a small morsel of carrot out of her teeth with the tip of her arm gladius. “Simple as, though I would like to remind you girls that I'm bullet resistant, not bullet proof. I'm not sure how long the recharge is going to take, but there's a limit to the use-time on this shit.” Eve and Jasper nodded.

“I haven't noticed any significant strain yet; perhaps adding more fodder to my ranks will drain me faster? As it is, it feels like I could keep going with this number forever.” Jasper shrugged as she looked to Eve.

“Same for me; no strain on my end, not even when I was coating the walls with it back at the apartment. But you're right, Cas, if we start feeling it, we should speak up so the other girls can pick up the slack, deal?”

They all agreed and then stood to do their equipment checks. Ammo was low, but a few minutes of looting the corpses around the building would solve that. Eve cursed the loss of her Deckland and hoped she would have the chance to get it back, assuming it hadn't already been swiped. “Alright, helmets prepped, guns cocked, let's fuck this bitch up! Carmine, Cassidy, if you would be so kind?” Eve gestured for the two women to lead the way, and they set off.

They cleared corridors and kicked in doors along the path, meeting minimal resistance. Most, if not all, of the remaining cultist presence was clumped up by the stairs leading to the lower levels, according to Carmine. “Too bad we ain't got any grenades; that'd fuck ‘em up big-time.” Cassidy lamented over her shoulder to the group.

"Nah, we couldn't use ‘em even if we did; we couldn't risk collapsing our only way down like that.” Eve knew the building was made of stern stuff, but it was getting on in years now; there was no telling what might happen. “How many are we looking at in total?”

Carmine answered a beat before Jasper “Forty-two!”

Jasper swore under her breath, and Carmine celebrated with a fist pump. “You only won because you think at light speed. Cheating cunt.”

Eve quirked a brow at Jasper's indignation but brushed past it. “Ok, not as bad as I'd feared, but still kind of fucked there's that many... The safest play might be to rush them with Jasper's dead heads and then throw ourselves into the melee as well. The last thing I want is for this to turn into a siege; we're fighting against time and losing as it is. If we can maneuver ourselves onto the stairs and then fight our way down, it'll be our win. If they manage to stop us, we'll lose our advantage and then have to fall back on plan B.”

Cassidy followed up, “Which is...?"

Eve grimaced and then smiled ruefully at her. “Grenade.”

Cassidy smiled back. “Ya know? I always had a soft spot for backup plans.”

Jasper huffed as she folded her arms. “If you two are done making out, we've got a cult to dismantle.”

Eve mocked offense as she quipped to Cassidy, “My, was that jealousy I heard?”

Cassidy was right on her heels. “I think it was, sister! It sounds like someone is letting those poor social skills shine again!”

Carmine pinched both of their asses, and they yipped, “Alright, enough flirting, Jasper; give us the signal, and we'll jump in. Eve, don't get fucking killed, please.” And just like that, the nervous tension was back in the air. “Helmets up, last check on guns.”

Their skull masks folded into place, and Eve pulled the bolt back to make sure there was a round in her chamber. “We're five by five, Jasper; hit ‘em.”

A commotion started up around the corner as confused shouts erupted from the group. Gunshots and heavy thumps sounded down the hall, and then Jasper's voice crackled to life over Eve's commtag, “Go!” Carmine and Cassidy launched past Eve at an unnatural pace. While Eve's body had been modified to perform on a superhuman level, Cassidy and Carmine were in a league of their own.

They flew down the short hallway towards the junction in front of the stairs; a swarming mass of flailing white bodies practically clogged the intersection as Jasper's dead heads fought to turn the area into a mosh pit. The familiar feeling of disgust rose within Eve as she approached the crowd; having to stomach that amount of unclean white filth was almost too much to bear. Cassidy had her Gladius extended to her side, and Carmine had a short length of her Warwire trailing behind her. The sterile halls of the treatment facility were about to run wet with the blood of vermin.

Cassidy arrived first, smashing through several of the pathetic faggots like a cannonball. Arms and heads pinwheeled through the air as she shifted from a battering ram into a spinning fury of razor-sharp death. Carmine followed suit, bludgeoning a handful of whitebois with her shoulder as her speed practically carried her through their bodies. Her war wire flicked out like the tail of some shimmering serpent, cleaving limbs and carving chunks out of torsos. It was beautiful.

Eve felt the call of violence in her blood, the powerful tonic of white suffering, and the scent of metallic blood, fueling her desire to obliterate every last speck of false masculinity she saw. Those sad, lowly little whelps were all pretending to be something they weren't. None of them truly understood their purpose, but Eve did. She saw it plain as day in every last one of their vile faces, and she would show them what it meant to be a useful whiteboi.

She joined the fray by leaping clear over the heads of the struggling flock, aiming directly for the stairwell on the opposite side of the hall. She would clear the stairwell and provide a foothold on their objective for the ladies to work towards. Jasper had opted to stay put, using her hoard to drag fresh bodies up the hall to be converted into a more useful version of themselves. As she spiraled through the air, Eve caught a glimpse of the first landing of the stairs.

Four cultists stood on it, patiently waiting to see what side of the struggle would prove to be superior. But as Eve cleared the swarm of bodies beneath her, their eyes latched onto her and began to track her. She'd anticipated some sort of presence in the stairwell, and so she'd brought her rifle to bear long before the midpoint of her jump.

The first of the four to react caught a round through its right eye socket. The second lost its jugular as the bullet tore half of its throat away. Blood pulsed from the wound in great, heavy spurts as the cultist stumbled into the railing and then over it, plummeting to some distant point far below them. The third and fourth dropped as their knees exploded from under them.

Eve hurtled towards their writhing bodies as she fell. She aimed a knee at the chest of one and her boot at the skull of the other, simultaneously ending both of them in a satisfying crunch of bone and sinew as her weight and speed drove them into the concrete landing. Aiming back up the stairs, she began to open up on any white body she could see.

She could hear voices below her, but for the moment, they were hesitating to come up the stairs any further than they had, so she focused on bringing down as many of the useless freaks as she could. She got lost in the rhythm of it. Knee, ankle, thigh, pelvis, collar bone, elbow, ass, stomach, and throat. Anything she could hit that would give Jasper a chance of reclaiming them. But after a dozen seconds, she gave up and started aiming at their vitals.

In total, the exchange lasted all of two minutes and forty seconds. Eve had fired until her rifle clicked empty and her magazine pocket was vacant. A small stream of blood flowed over the top stair and cascaded down the steps on its way to the sublevels. Some soft moans and hisses of pain sporadically rose from the sea of corpses, but beyond that, it had been a total victory for the four women.

Eve snatched up a fallen pistol, pulling the magazine to check its ammunition level before resuming her watch on the stairs below. “How'd we make out, girls? Report.”

Jasper's winded voice came over her commtag as she jogged down the hall to join them. “I'm never doing this again!”

Cassidy laughed, also winded, but in a much better mood: "Ohhhhh, no! We are doing that again! Shit reminded me of my bar-fighting days! Except instead of getting my ass beat black and blue by a bunch of angry Black Kings, I got to murder a bunch of white pussies! Carmine, did you see that one faggot trying to run around, missing half its head? Fuckin’ hilarious!”

Carmine laughed and added her anecdote, “Oh. My. God! That was so funny. Did you catch the one Eve shot in the knee? Fucker, like, tripped right into my fucking wire! Killed itself! Honestly, the rest of them could have learned something from that."

Eve cleared her throat as she kept an eye on the lower levels. “Uh, ladies?”

Jasper piped up, either purposely ignoring Eve or too wrapped up in the celebration. “Honestly, you two didn't both need to carve apart my lead slave. The way you went at him almost makes me feel as though you were targeting me specifically."

Cassidy waved a hand to dismiss Jasper's concerns. “You know it wasn't like that, Jas! It's hard enough to tell whitebois apart even when they ain't all tangled up in a ball and covered in blood!”

Eve cleared her throat more forcefully, and this time the women turned to her. “CULT? TIME! LET'S GO?!”

The three other women shared a glance and then quickly made their way to the stairs, grabbing anything that looked like it might prove useful off of the corpses as they went. “Jasper, how long do you think it'll take for you to reclaim this bunch?”

Eve swiveled her head back up the stairs to look at her, and she shook her head. “Too long if we're on a schedule. Maybe one or two, but not enough to be useful to us.”

Eve swore under her breath, "Alright, we're splitting up, Cas; you're with Jasper. Give her cover until she can get a semi-decent number of dead heads up and running, and then join us downstairs; Carmine will keep you in the loop on where we're at. Sound good?”

The three nodded, and Carmine proceeded down the stairs to join Eve. “If we get pinned down or outnumbered, we'll call for you to break off the process and join up regardless of your number.”

With that, Eve turned to begin the trek into the sublevels. “Carmine, do you have any idea where this lot is holed up? Bottom level?”

Carmine nodded. “You nailed it, baby. The bottom level is what looks to be the main reservoir chamber. I don't have access to the cameras since they probably destroyed them, but motion detectors for the doorways are tripping every few seconds down there with patrols. Other levels are pretty light on activity, so we can probably just dive straight down.”

Eve took the magazine Carmine held out for her and slapped it into her rifle. While cycling the chamber, she looked back up towards her other teammates before taking the second set of stairs down. Their faces were obscured by the blood-soaked skulls. “Good luck, ladies; we'll see you shortly.”

Cassidy blew a kiss at her before turning to continue looting the bodies. Jasper didn't wave so as much as she turned away, which was typical. “Let's go, babe; we've got a cult to crush.”