Page 63 of Unhinged Omega

He's close, that's for damn sure.

"Fuck," I mutter, raking a hand through my hair. "Fuck fuckfuck!"

"My thoughts exactly," Lex drawls.

I round on her, jabbing a finger at her scarred face. "This isn't a fucking joke. If that thing gets loose?—"

"If?" Diesel pipes up, his voice cracking. "Don't you meanwhen?"

I grab him by the front of his shirt, hauling him close. "Choose your next wordsverycarefully," I growl.

His eyes go wide. "I just meant... well, look at it! Nothing's stopped it so far. Maybe we should, I don't know, evacuate?"

I shove him away in disgust. "Evacuate towhere, dipshit? In case you haven't noticed, we're in the middle of a goddamn wasteland."

"What about the bunker?" Lex suggests hesitantly. "The one under the old?—"

"We arenotabandoning this base," I snarl. "Do you have any idea how much firepower we've got stockpiled here? How many years I've spent building this operation?"

How much I stand to lose if I walk away now?

"Okay, so it's not that wecan'tevacuate," Diesel points out. "Just that you don't want to?"

"He has a point," Lex muses.

"You're both going into the pit if you say another word," I mutter, raking a hand through my hair as my other hand goes instinctively to my pocket for the crumpled pack of synth cigarettes I keep for special occasions when I need to calm the fuck down. My hands are already trembling by the time I manage to get one out. It's bent, but it'll do.

I light it and turn back to the pit, taking a long drag and watching as the Knight continues its relentless assault on the walls. Each blow sends tremors through the ground, and I swear I can feel them in my bones.

"We need to contain it," I mutter, more to myself than the idiots around me. "Reinforce the walls, maybe. Or dig the pit deeper."

"Uh, boss?" Diesel's nervous voice grates on my nerves. "About that..."

I close my eyes, counting backward from ten. "What now?"

"Well, see, we kinda used up all the concrete mix on that statue Mikey and Lex wanted to make, and?—"

My eyes snap open. "You didwhat?"

The moron in question actually perks up. "Oh yeah! Wanna see it? It's not quite finished, but I think it really captures your essence."

Before I can tell her exactly where they can shove their "art," the ground bucks beneath our feet. I stumble, catching myself onthe edge of a storage container. When I look up, my heart nearly stops.

The Knight isclimbing.

He's found purchase in the loosened earth, those lethal claws digging in as he hauls his massive frame upward. It's slow, agonizing progress, but it'sworking.

"Get the chains!" I roar, already sprinting toward the nearest storage unit. "The big ones! And someone find me a fucking rocket launcher!"

My men scatter, Lex barking orders as they run. I yank open the door to the unit, my hands shaking as I dig through crates of weaponry. Everything's already turning hazy and violet around the corners of my vision. Maybe taking a goddamn hit off a synth cigarette wasn't the best idea, but everything going on has me at the verge of mentally snapping and I was running out of fucking options.

Where the fuck is it?

A high-pitched scream cuts through the air, and I whirl around. One of the men—some new recruit whose name I can't be bothered to remember—is backing away from the pit, his face white as a sheet.

"It's looking at me!" he wails. "Oh god, itsawme!"

I grab the nearest object—a crowbar—and hurl it at him. It clangs off his helmet and he yelps.

---