Kaitlyn, T-973, awoke to the klaxon of the alarm outside the sleeping quarters. The six soldiers in the room shot up out of their bunks and immediately began dressing into their uniforms. The company who consulted Kaitlyn and the other soldiers had orange and white as the official colors in their logo. As a result, foot soldiers were required to wear those colors as ribbons in their hair. Ordinarily, T-973 would not need to respond to an alarm while not on duty, but this was a code red, and it must have been pretty serious.
Kaitlyn and the other foot soldiers quickly made their way to the briefing room. Once there, they found personnel scurrying around trying to locate the threat on monitors. “About a dozen guards in Wing G fell silent, their vital signs indicating that they had all been killed in a matter of minutes. Most disturbing, many of the surveillance cameras have gone offline and indicate someone may want to break into the labs in that section,” said the lieutenant. “We will send a large team into that part of the facility to engage... whatever it is. Go ahead and clone a few dozen copies of T-973 and take care of the threat.” “Yes sir!.” shouted the foot soldiers.
In the next room were the cloning machines. Kaitlyn stepped up onto a platform and the machine immediately began a scan of the body. A bunch of green lasers went up and down the soldier, taking careful measurement of its dimensions. A few seconds later, T-973 stepped off the platform and, suddenly, the cloning machines began warming up. The sounds coming from the machines were getting louder and louder, until POW! A flash of bright white light and a foot soldier appeared on one of the platforms. After a second, the clone stepped forward as another soldier quickly materialized behind it. Then, the other machines started firing off and soon a column of soldiers was forming in the room, all identical copies of Kaitlyn.
A few short minutes later, several dozen foot soldiers were cloned and were now collecting weapons and supplies. Kaitlyn was looking on at her clones moving slowly through a line collecting equipment. It amazed her how routine this whole process had become. In any other situation, this would all seem very strange. Seeing several dozen copies of yourself readying to meet an adversary that might likely decimate them all and probably your very self in the process. The psychological training she had undergone eliminated virtually all sense of self-preservation. Now, the thought of being cannon fodder for a sketchy bio research company didn’t bother her one bit, not at all. She was also conditioned to be gender-neutral, not regard herself as a woman or anything, just a foot soldier.
The small army of clone soldiers left and made their way to Wing G to investigate the camera outage and potential intruder. After a few minutes, they arrived to find the dead guards and the door to the labs ajar. “We need housekeeping staff here in Wing G, a few bodies here need disposed of,” said one of the lead soldiers over the radio. One of the dead soldiers started moving on the ground, surprising some of the soldiers standing nearby. “Apparently, we need to get that telemetry equipment checked out, this one is still alive,” said the lead soldier.
The previously presumed dead soldier had blonde hair and green eyes. While it was uncommon for foot soldiers to have blonde hair, it wasn’t a requirement to have black or brown hair. Most soldiers preferred to color their hair black to look alike. “I thought I was dead,” said the blonde soldier. “You should be,” replied another soldier. “What can you tell us about what happened here?,” asked one of the lead soldiers. “It all happened so quickly. I remember a man surprise me and then nothing more. It looks like he grabbed S-562 and used her to gain access to the lab,” said the guard. Foot soldiers have access to most sensitive areas of the complex. It is possible that a guard could provide access to an intruder through the retinal scanner, even if they were dead. The retinal scanner can not determine if someone is alive or not. As they were interviewing the guard, T-973 led a group of soldiers into the labs to look for any possible intruders. She reached for the silver pendant necklace beneath her t-shirt and kissed it for good luck.
Several minutes passed and they found no sign of an intruder in any of the top secret labs. “Sir, we’ve got something!,” said one of the soldiers. T-973 rushed over to see what they were talking about. A cabinet door was slightly open. They all raised their weapons toward the cabinet as one of them volunteered to open the cabinet door. Staring at them was the naked body of a dead foot soldier. It appeared to have been stripped of its uniform and hidden in the cabinet. “The guard! I thought they looked familiar,” shouted T-973.
Transy Honey, a secret agent, is known to break into facilities and pose as a foot soldier. She’s a transgender woman with a knack for infiltrating the foot soldier ranks and spying on them. Once an assignment is finished, it usually ends with hundreds of corpses and a large complex burning to the ground.
Outside the lab entrance, shouting in the distance and over the radio can be heard. “It’s the guard!.” Transy Honey realized the gig was up. “Oh well,” said Transy. She jumped onto the shoulders of an unsuspecting foot soldier as the group opened fire ripping the clone apart with a hail of bullets. Stray bullets managed to take out a few more soldiers caught in the crossfire. Transy had managed to avoid the shower of bullets and swung from one rafter to another. Transy lept from the rafter onto a pair of soldiers killing one of them when she landed on its neck. She took the other and used it as a human shield. The remaining dozen or so foot soldiers opened fire on Transy. Her human shield proved useful. With the resistant fabric of its uniform stopping many of the bullets from exiting the body and hitting Transy. She returned fire and dropped all but one of the soldiers with a long burst of gunfire. The lone remaining foot soldier attempted to surrender to Transy. It got down on its knees and begged. In one quick movement, she effortlessly twisted the soldier’s neck and it collapsed onto a pile of other foot soldiers.
T-973 watched from inside the lab area at what had just happened. There are so many bodies everywhere, she thought. Transy grabbed the dozens of the soldiers and stacked them into a giant pile. Transy was still wearing the uniform she stole off of the dead foot soldier. There was much blood splattered over it. She removed the orange and white ribbon from her hair, letting it hang freely. She removed the rest of the uniform and proceeded to dress in her own outfit - blue jeans, a white blouse, and blue beret.
T-973, once again, reached for her pendant necklace and kissed it. It was a gift from her boyfriend shortly before she enlisted as a foot soldier. She tucked the necklace back under her t-shirt and charged into the room towards Transy. By now, Transy was sitting atop the giant pile of bodies, taking selfies with her cell phone. Kaitlyn attempted climbing the pile, slipping a few times with an avalanche of bodies falling onto her. The fourth time, she made some progress and was getting really close to the top. Transy, pulling out her boomerang, flung it some distance away in the large room. T-973 was feet away from Transy when the boomerang flew back and its razor sharp edge sliced its head off in a shower of blood. Kaitlyn's headless body fell to its knees and slumped forward onto Transy. The head tumbled down the steep hill of bodies toward the ground.
Looking down at the body laying next to her, Transy noticed the silver pendant necklace. She reached down and picked it up, inspecting it. “How cute! I wonder how much I’ll get for this at Lew’s Pawn Shop?”
-- THE END --