“This looks like another hospital.” Maria looked left towards a destroyed building, with a gigantic red cross sign declaring itself on top of the building. Some of the platoon heard her, and looked towards the hospital. It was probably filled with corpses of civilians. Nothing much to bother with.
The cracked and shelled pavement rattled underneath the weight of the feet that has been walking on it for hours. Crumbled barricades of military origin occasionally popped out on the pavement, littered with the corpses of dead soldiers and cyborgs.
Some still flowed blood and electricity from their bodies, which Evelyn deduced was because they’re still in an active battlefield.
“Good,” Smith extended six tendrils, grabbing the weapons that lay scattered using them. “We’re at the right place it seems.”
As they continued their march from abandoned streets to twisted alleyways, Rivas detected something. It was signals, odd signals, coordinated but not the same the Chinese were using—It was different.
“Staff, I’m picking signals everywhere. Not the same ones though.” Rivas closed his eyes, as faint signs of bio-luminescence began rippling and emerging from his skin. “They look like.. friendlies.”
“It is probably due to the American and Taiwanese troops fighting in this borough.” Ava replied. And she wasn’t fully wrong. Regardless, the platoon went forward, 20 men and women navigating through the rigid alleys.
They kept walking for another hour. Another grueling 60 minutes of evading drones rushing through the sky to reach the main headquarters of the American troops in Taichung. Yet they kept moving. They’ve been through the jungles of Taiwan, they can survive another day in the streets of Taichung.
After yet another hour of moving through the city crawl, they arrived at a ten-story office building. The crew went in, to discover the sight of dead, decomposing corpses of soldiers, civilians, and the bodies of machines. The platoon decided to rest in the area for a while.
The three demigod clones stood next to each other, as they guarded the point while Evelyn and Keiko healed the still-wounded and injured. Irizarry volunteered to help a few of the injured, and started with Bryan.
“Hey.. Mikel?” Bryan flinched as Irizarry applied a solution to the still-human right arm.
“Yeah?”
“Am I.. a deadweight?”
Mikel Irizarry paused. Bryan has always been considered the most incapable and unfit to serve in the project. Both men were at the same ranks, however Bryan was just out of his teenage years before being drafted into the war. He has heard the other platoon members calling him a deadweight, even the ones who were injured.
“Yeah, you are..” He paused. “Cuz’ damn man! You’re killing all the weight we have!” Irizarry slurred his speech by accident, unsure if that will lighten the mood up. Bryan’s reaction? He just sat there as Irizarry patched him on right arm. Bryan smiled lightly, appreciating the effort.
Meanwhile, Andrew and Ava talked as they guarded the perimeter.
“Ava, have you considered what it feels to be human?”
“No. However, I understand that… We need to do what the humans call as ‘feeling emotions.’”
“..Smith considers me as human.” Maria joined in the conversation. “And I think.. that’s fulfilling.”
The trio did not continue the conversation.
And finally, Rivas arrived from a stairwell leading to the second floor. In his reddish hands, he held a scorched USB. He approached Smith.
“Found this, staff. Connected it to a PC, got data on experimented units in Sector 9. Looks like advanced cyborgs.”
Evelyn looked towards him “..Sector 9 was a research fac. Bio-engineering bastards used civilians there to do god-knows-what.”
Smith’s jaw tightened. “Well, we’ll clear that out then. For absolutely no reason.”
-
SECTOR 9, Taichung Borough
A carcass wrapped in steel. That’s what the crew had called it when they saw the sector building. Filled with abominations of synthetic sinew, broken concrete, cracked glass, and rusting waste of tungsten and chrome. The light hung low on the ceiling, flickering from dying light bulbs.
The platoon walked around in the area, examining the sinew, casually raising their blades, tendrils and rifles onto anything that seemed to be moving. The building was essentially a horror apocalypse movie set, with rubble covering most of the ground floor.
Mold bloomed on the organic matters covering patches of concrete, merging with tubes of bone and metal, covered in a sludge of silver—possibly uranium, possibly not. Though, the platoon are essentially gods, so radiation doesn’t affect them. They essentially were mutating continuously, so it’s not
The building was odd. It had no floors above ground—possibly because of the fact that a massive hole was on the top areas, meaning one thing. Bombardment.
The platoon decided to go deep into the underground chambers below. The stronger, more fit and capable ones went first into the hall. As they did, they saw horrors beyond human comprehension, something no one, not even someone with just a little piece of humanity would do.
Twisted human forms, restrained on the wall, held by rusting steel. Their chests were tore open, revealing countless chrome-armored organs, with mouths open and frozen in agony and pain. Their limbs were only left as bones combined with some form of chromium armor limbs. And the most notable thing? That same sludge colored in silver.
“Uh.. What is this? Some kind of Chinese trademark?” Evelyn pointed out towards the sludge.
“Possibly.” Rivas extended a tendril he cut off towards the sludge. “I’m feeling.. some kind of electric signal from it, this is probably made of metal..”
“How the fuck do you even do this, dude?” Paul was visibly jealous towards the new powers of Sebastian Rivas.
“Yeah bro, how come?” Badrick followed in with his words, which added nothing to the question.
And then:
A wet screech, echoing down the corridor. Something was coming.
Rivas pointed his rifle towards the hallway, and extended his wrist blades. The rest follow suit. Tendrils extend, eyes go white and orange, as they all prepare for the worst. A super-biomech? Perhaps.
And then, it emerged.
A monstrous, multi-limbed, legless slob of sludge, made of sinew, flesh and chrome. Held by trauma and rage, this one doesn’t think like the rest. It feels rage, pain, and trauma. It was once several humans, combined and mixed together by maniac researchers into this horrid being. In the center, lies a gaping mouth, filled with steel and chromium teeth.
It extended a hand, growing miles long, cutting through the air in swift motion and nearly injuring one of the personnel. In response, the platoon opened fire, as bolts of plasma screeched through the air and pummeled through the abomination. No effect, the biomech kept moving on towards the platoon.
Smith, as the staff sergeant, decided to step forward, and drew his Khopesh from his abdomen. With a hard swing of his hands, the majestic weapon was thrown into the center of the biomech. With a swift blow, It delivered a precision cut and sliced through the creature like paper.
And then, the upper part fell right back to the lower part, as they united back into one abomination once more.
“Damn, thought that’d look cool.” Smith stepped back slightly. As he did so, roots of flesh and doom burrowed through the steel floor, and made its way below the creature, impaling it in place.
But the job wasn’t done yet. More sounds of wet screeching echoed throughout the entire floor. The platoon prepared themselves, as they engaged the biomechs in combat once more.
Smith led the charge, with his tendrils splitting into maws that released shards upon shards hurled upon them, with most of them immediately getting consumed by the biomechs. He slashed one using another Khopesh. The demigod clones flanked behind him, blades extended from their wrists.
The rest began throwing grenades upon the biomechs with inhuman speeds and precision, striking directly at their opening mouths. As the explosion began erupting from the insides of these horrendous abominations, more biomechs came into the fray, attracted by the noise.
With no choice left, the platoon began retreating back into the surface, using the last remaining bits of their grenades and firing their ammunition towards the hulking masses.
-
At the same time, above a rooftop.
As dusk set in on the Taiwanese sky, a lone sniper, dressed in an old and battered urban uniform with an attached name tag, “Xia Xingjuan”, adjusted her scope as the noise of broken rusted steel echoed through the streets, entering her ears.
“Yòu láile” She thought to herself. There it is again.
She zoomed in on the platoon as they entered the gates of the Sector, seeing the horrifying flesh tendrils and the wrist blades of these strange-looking soldiers. Such odd power, it’s almost as if they were monsters from hell.
She thought to herself. If these men and women were enemies, there was nothing she—or anyone in that matter could do.
And suddenly, from the earpiece she wore, a voice buzzed through.
“Bàogào, Xia.” Commander Chen’s voice rang through her ears, demanding her report on the target.
“Zūnmìng,” She replied with a classic ‘yes, sir.’ “Visual contact confirmed. Target approaching Sector 9 building entrance. At least 20 people.”
“Who, or what are they?”
She paused, she looked back towards one of the strange soldiers—possibly male, looking back towards the street. From below him, spikes of bone extended and pointed outwards. The strange man entered inside shortly afterward.
“I think it’s them, sir. The American Gods.”
“Are you sure, Xia?”
“Yes, sir. Also, visual contact is lost. They have entered Sector 9.”
“I’ll inform every available unit to guard the entrance.” The rough voice of the commander buzzed through the earpiece. “Prepare for company.”
The voice disappeared. All she can do now is prepare for whatever they were. Just shortly afterwards, she could hear footsteps and the hum of engines. Her comrades. Her friends.
They all began preparing formations. The vehicles were placed in front, and the guerrilla soldiers behind them. Snipers filled the rooftops nearby, and drones were placed at a steady altitude just barely above a human’s sight. If they were human, at least.
And then, after nearly an hour:
BOOM!
Explosions erupted below, as the thundering boom slipped from the debris and rubble of the building, echoing outside to the ears of the guerrillas. Xia adjusted the scope, and didn’t flinch.
And then, she saw them again.
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Those soldiers. The monsters.
They came pouring into the streets, halting abruptly as they raised their brows in confusion with the encounter. Clad in blood, bones, steel and flesh, they were surrounded, scopes trained at them, gun clicks echoing from all sides. And then, in a sudden moment, everyone exclaimed in different languages, out of confusion, shock, and bewilderment.
“..What?”
-
Outside Sector 9 Entrance
Commander Chen Qiu stood astonished and marveled at the appearance of the DOD platoon. As a weathered old man who has seen more horrors than what he should have, he is out of words for this one in particular. Humans, that barely looks like humans. Not violent, not passive either.
He spoke in a manner that contains weakness and cold in it. “Are you the monsters the Americans sent?”
Smith nodded. “Yes, sir. I am Staff Sergeant Smith Johnson, commander of the DOD Platoon.”
“Good, I am Commander Chen Qiu of the Republican Resistance.” Chen began to slowly eye and observe the godflesh. The inhuman design and feel of the bones and tendrils extending out of their bodies, the strange aura emitted by them.
“You don’t look human or machine, at all.” Chen puts his hand below his chin, carefully observing them. Smith looked at him dead in the eye.
“..Neither are the biomechs, sir.”
A pause followed.
Chen’s posture shifted slightly. He declared his views.
“We’ve heard of your arrival when the US declared a new unit that ‘surpasses any Eastern weapon.’ We do not trust you, but we need every help we can get.”
Chen raised his voice, and demanded an answer. “How.. willing are you to die for our nation? For this nation?”
Smith hesitated. He didn’t know what or how to answer. And then, Maria suddenly stepped in, trying to aid Smith in his response.
“Sector 9 has been cleared out of any biomechs. We have also killed a number of—”
“I am not asking about your achievements.” Chen cut her words with his sharp tongue. “I am asking about your commitment.”
Smith finally responded. “I’ve bled for it. Willingly went ahead from schedule. What makes you think we won’t?”
Another pause. And then, Chen breathed a sigh.
“Alright, I get it.” He pulled his nose. “If you’re as powerful as the Americans say, then help us fight. Makes those bandits pay,”
Smith chuckled. In a lighthearted way, he answered. “Sure thing, mate. We’re demigods, after all.”
Chen gestured to his men to lower their guns. He then gestured towards Smith and the rest of his platoon to follow them. The crew proceeded to do so, as they marched towards the resistance HQ, in the central-east district of the borough. From street to street, and confrontations to confrontations.
-
Resistance HQ, Underground Central-East District
Lieutenant Chen Qiu and Staff Sergeant Smith Johnson, alongside the demigod clones and a few other guerrilla commanders stood below a flickering light, overlooking and surrounding a tactical table covered with an extremely old metro map of Taichung, possibly one of the maps used before the war.
The map was written in Guoyu, Taiwanese characters. The sectors were written with a very monotone and boring look. Every zone had red markets. Red means it’s hostile, occupied. The communist symbol.
“Alright, let’s start.” Chen spoke with a heavy Mandarin accent. “Since I believe everyone here can speak English, I shall use it.”
“We want to attack these sectors, known as the Industrial Sector. It comprises sectors 1, 6, and 3. Our best minds have come together to brainstorm, but nothing seems to be plausible or realistic enough. “Worse still, the splicers and biomechs control every choke point and entrance.”
Smith immediately steps in and declares his ideas regarding the assault. “10 of our men and a few hundred of yours will strike the weakest opening. Easy victory.”
A silence followed, as his words stunned the guerrilla commanders. Sure, they’ve seen the physical abnormalities of the platoon, but are they this narcissist?
Chen responded. “No offense to you, or your fellow creatures, Staff Sergeant… But this is suicide, even with your powers..”
“How so? We can just obliterate them while your men sneak in and launch an attack from the inside.”
One of the guerrilla commanders answered. “You are trying to send us in an area surveilled drones, and the weakest opening.. is still filled with months of fortifications.”
“Well, then we don’t go head-on.” Smith gestured at Ava, as she pulls out a data slate, and activated a hologram map of Taichung’s metro system. The room was filled with gasps, as some stepped closer and analyzed the map.
Ava spoke in a very monotone attitude.
“According to data research, there is still a functioning metro system beneath the city, barely damaged and only guarded by an estimated few hundred biomechs. If we were to attack from there..”
“We can flank and outmaneuver them.”
Smith ended her explanation with three simple words. “We go under.”
Chen, visibly annoyed and deadpan, exclaimed “Go underground and fight some mad, experimented animals and then strike them from below. No backup, no extraction, no second wave.”
“Yep, that’s the plan.”
Silence followed.
“We’re crawling into a grave.”
“Only if we fail.” Maria suddenly muttered. Eyes were now upon her, as she finally spoke after countless meetings.
“..You’re asking people to die for an illusion that a chance exists.” Chen pulled his nose once more, and breathed out a sigh. Smith was visibly annoyed by the constant counters. He finally snapped.
“So you’re just gonna stay here and die like maggots?”
A long pause, eyes were now upon him. Smith began to speak louder.
“As I said. You’re all just gonna die here like maggots? Fight in the shadows until the last of you dies under the bolts of a splicer? And not do anything for the people being experimented on here? Say anything you want, but..”
“We’re not leaving Taichung in red. Never.”
Another long, silent pause.
The old Taiwanese Lieutenant looked around towards his tired, exhausted men. At the walking beasts with a slight spark of humanity. At the leader of the flesh, who was once human, and still bore the signs of it.
Chen exhaled. And reluctantly, he agreed.
“Fine. We do it tonight. I and the rest will do my best to aid in the operation.”
Smith nods in agreement. “Thank you, lieutenant. We’ll handle the strikes, you handle the navigation.”
The old man chuckled. “So we’ll be your guides on this tour?”
Smith smirked slightly in response to Chen’s words. “Nah. We’ll fight together.”
The planning eventually resumed, as more people entered, and the holographic maps shifted, and routes were drawn on them using hand gestures.
As the planning was written, and suggestions into preparations, Maria leaned towards Smith, and asked a simple question.
“Do you think we can do this?”
Smith didn’t answer for a moment. He stared with his scarlet eyes to the hologram, towards the central glowing node. He muttered under his breath.
“No one here has ever done this before. But with you, and everyone else? We’ll go through it.”
-
Taichung Borough, Metro Entrance
The dark of the night loomed above the ground, as an atmosphere of tension began to rise. Chinese troops began reporting less activities above ground done by the resistance. Suspicion was rising.
Meanwhile, the metro entry was filled with the sound of leaky pipes dripping water, and the whir and buzz of failing machines. The walls were cracked and covered in moss. The atmosphere was heavy, the air reeked of rust and mildew.
About 100 guerrillas and the entire DOD platoon stood at the entrance. In front of them, lies a makeshift holotable, flickering a map with orange and blue lights captured by the tired and black eyes of the platoon and the guerrilla cell.
Lieutenant Chen Qiu, and Staff Sergeant Smith Johnson began pointing to specific areas of the map. With a battered yet functioning stylus, they both exclaimed notices and orders regarding the locations.
“Tunnel S-3C is the most fragile and can collapse under any explosive. Do NOT use any ordnance until you’re out of there.” Chen exclaimed.
Evelyn whispered quietly. “So.. Just use melee weapons? That’s easy”
“Not sure if our bone stuff could work.” Bryan nervously responded, hearing the whisper. “Especially after sector 9.”
Their attention was immediately diverted to Smith, who began barking the simplified version of the operation.
“Alright, since most of you are idiots, let me simplify this.” He zoomed in towards the metro map using a spreading hand gesture. “We go in here, we break their signals, then we kill their commands and boom, no more splicers and biomechs. Understand?”
Everyone nodded, as they began to arm themselves.
“Alright then. Let’s go dark.”
And so they went into the metro, rifles and blades raised, with night vision on, both artificial and natural. More than a hundred men began flooding the entrance with their boots and feet, marching into the underground.
As planned, the platoon split with the guerrillas, with the guerrillas themselves splitting off into four groups, as they travel along 4 metro sub-branches, all leading towards the signal array and the command control station, all located on an old government building on the surface.
From the second tunnel, in which the ‘Demigods of Death’ platoon travels, Rivas leads the march towards the destination, acting like a massive human-shaped antenna. Smith guards the rest, with Andrew and Bryan guarding the rear.
“Three patrols above, full humans with exosuits.” Rivas’s signal sense caused pulses of light to shine from his skin. Suddenly, he stops in his tracks, signaling the group to halt their movement. “Hold it. There’s drone signals.”
Everyone froze. Then, the sound of a clunk as something—probably a service panel, creaked in the silent tunnels. Finally, a scout drone appeared. Floating, automated and metallic. In a swift move, Rivas opened a spear tendril from his back, which lunged toward the drone.
With a silent crack and the sound of small clatters, the drone was bisected, and gone in the blink of an eye. The camera was still alive however, looking towards the crew. Rivas shot out molten tungsten from one of his eyes, and directed it to the camera, melting it. The crew continued, walking silently into narrower and smaller tunnels.
As they approached another narrow tunnel, Rivas once more signaled a stop. This time? Chinese splicer teams. No more than three, heavily augmented and clad in sleek black chromium. They were whispering barely audible commands in Mandarin.
The group stalls. They cannot afford a high-stakes fight as of now, especially in a stealth mission. Especially with the fact that the splicers are still human and retain their human intelligence. And then suddenly.
Maria cracked open the ground with her feet, as spikes extended from the ground and pierced the splicers. She turned towards the tunnel, checking the conditions of the three splicers.
“Move, everyone.” She spoke over the comms.
The crew continued to walk. They encountered nearly no one in the tunnels of the metro afterwards. After some deducing by the demigod trio whilst stopping at checkpoints, they concluded that the biomechs are either on the side of the guerrillas, or they were now above surface. They continued on regardless.
-
Taichung Underground Metro, few hours later
The crew emerged to the subsurface level after hours of traversing the tunnels of the metro. They emerged below an escalator shaft leading towards the ground, in the western district. Contact with the Taiwanese guerrillas have been cut off, however Rivas has confirmed that they are still here, in different locations.
Above them, is the central command station of Taichung Borough. Embedded within the central system are no longer splicers—yet elite cyborgs of the People’s Liberation Army. They carried their chrome armor and their rifles around as if it was paper. The alarms haven’t activated, but one shot would change that.
Smith signaled and spoke towards the platoon in a low tone.
“Alright. Let’s keep this simple, platoon.”
“I and Andrew will charge head forward. Bryan and Irizarry will cover fire. Rivas will help us with comms and SIGINIT stuff. Ava and Maria will take the left flank. Keiko and Evelyn? Right flank. Badrick and Paul? Just try not to be dickheads.”
He finally finished for everyone else in the platoon. “For all of ya, just focus on attacking.”
And they all jumped above ground, screaming and yelling on top of their lungs. Gunfire was immediately targeted towards them, as bolts of plasma charged towards the emerging platoon.
The platoon responded in kind, their eyes turning bright orange and fired molten sprays of metal, as they screeched and struck through the chrome-synth armor of the cyborgs.
A fierce battle ensued between the garrison and the rag-tag platoon. Smith was the first to attack, as tendrils exploded from the back of his divine spine, splitting into gaping maws that shot shards into the brain shells of the cyborgs.
Andrew began charging and lunging towards the Chinese, his hulking body acting as a helping tank for Smith, as his armor smashed a cyborg’s chrome armor mid-sprint, sending the machine flying through the sky.
Another began preparing his defense and lunged toward Andrew, only for Andrew to grab him by the sides and rip him using pure strength into two lifeless pieces of chromium and flesh, bleeding and buzzing electricity.
Meanwhile, Maria and Ava took to the left, and flanked the station like a pincer. Maria’s hands extended wrist blades, as she began slashing at the chromium armor of the cyborgs. Sparks of fire and electricity flew with every slash, combined with a blur of her white hair and her flesh.
A cyborg charged towards Ava, plasma blades raised, but she immediately threw a spear tendril at him, as it decapitated the synthetic head of the man in seconds. Meanwhile, Bryan and Irizarry laid covering fire from a collapsed car, using a captured machine gun, firing rails of plasma that burrowed deep into the ground and the enemy.
Badrick and Paul, finally not being the duo of comedies, began forming shields of bone spikes, emerging from the ground deep within, as lobbed grenades and bolts of plasma were easily shielded away.
However, the cyborgs weren’t about to give in so easily.
The cyborgs began rallying themselves, screaming and chanting in Mandarin as they began regrouping around a massive electromagnetic cannon the size of a truck. They shouted: “Qǐdòng dàpào!,” Activate the cannon.
The cannon sent waves of electromagnetic pulses, hurled towards the crew, as some of the semis struggled under the intense pressure. Maria, unfortunately was caught in front and in the middle of the cannon’s burst, and was hit with the hardest direct pulse. She grunted, and was forced to hide behind the cover.. of Smith.
Smith tanked it, as he grunted and roared with all his might against the force of the cannon, the pain traveling through his synthetic nervous system. He forced himself forward despite all of it, crawling like an animal near death. The cyborgs were shocked—how could a single man take on the entire force of the cannon?
The cyborgs began throwing their ordnance towards the man. Bolts of plasma, metal rails, it slowed Smith, but it didn’t make him move an inch. They forgot a very crucial fact about him. He was no ordinary man, nor an ordinary demigod.
He’s the living godflesh and human determination combined.
Then, a heavily augmented heavy cyborg stepped into the fray, a hulking quad-armed ‘man.’ Unaffected by the pulses, he grabbed Smith by the nape and slammed him into the hard concrete of the ground. Shouting at him in Mandarin as he slowly scraped the still-regenerating flesh.
And all of a sudden, the guerrillas emerged. They fired their guns with impossible accuracy in a frantic move. They desperately fired at every enemy, every single cyborg and biomech they could see with their own limited two eyes. A stray round hit the core and coil of the gun, as it blows up, sending pieces of metal into the air, and rendering the cannon useless.
Smith grappled the heavy, plunging his hands—which were now spikes of bone into the cyborg, and immediately threw the mechanical being with immense strength into the air, sending him to god-knows-where. He rejoined the fray against the machines of China, firing his bone shards wildly into the air as his tendrils flailed around.
At this point, the battlefield was not just a battlefield. It was a tournament of death. Fluids of blood and oil sparked and flew across the station, as the station slowly burned to the ground.
Taichung is for the Formosans, forever and ever.
-
Central Command Station, Central District
Smith stands above a collapsing rooftop, his body suspended by claw tendrils attached to the remaining parts of the roof. He eyes his platoon soldiers as they take off, one of them even obliterating an entire splicer team in the blink of an eye.
And then, just as he was about to jump back into action, the sound of a helicopter whirring in the air caught him. He looked above him.
Commander Chen Qiu. He spoke and yelled towards the demi, hands raised and curled to a fist. “Staff Sergeant, We need to talk.”
