A24 slowly walked through one of the lower floors of the new citadel which they entered. It was not quiet, like their citadel, it was loud and filled with groans, which meant there were at least a few hundred undead.
He seemed to be alone, H49 and his crew were nowhere to be found. His armor was drenched in blood on certain parts and scratched on his helmet and shoulders. A24's breath was heavy, sweat running down his forehead.
"God fricking damn it!" He muttered to himself, "How could this happen? We planned for this crap and—" He clenched his fists around his gun and also clenched his teeth. He started whisper-screaming and tried banging against the walls but stopped only centimetres away.
He closed his eyes and tried to relax his heart which he could feel in his throat.
"Breath slowly." He muttered and opened his eyes. He pressed his gun to the ground and used it to stand up.
A heavy noise, or, to be more precise, a grunt came from the room he had left a few moments ago. A24 picked up his gun and pointed towards the entrance. The grunt grew louder and A24 started counting down:
"3…"
"2…"
"1…" Then he started shooting. Over a dozen undead stormed into the room and tried to attack him. He stormed backwards through multiple rooms and kept shooting at them. "Seven." He said as the seventh undead dropped to the ground and the tentacle visibly retracted from the back of the corpse's head.
A24 ran around a lot of corners and tried to block the entrances, but there were no doors nor any furniture for him to use: "Who designed these citadels? Why in my name are the upper floors so developed and high-tech but the lower ones so empty and outdated? That is such an annoying design choice!" He already put his gun back into his holster and started ignoring the undead to be able to run faster.
He sprinted through a large and open room. It was 6 metres from floor to ceiling. The room was shaped like a rectangle, the walls from entrance to exit were double the length of the other walls( 20 metres). The walls were decorated like a mix out of a factory and a throne room.
The room after this one was even bigger. It was indeed a factory. "Why do they have a factory?" He muttered walking deeper.
"So many useless machines."
The factory was filled with machines, some broken, others turned on and working, but all of them had nothing to do with each other. Just random machines which looked good together. "Are those—" He walked across a glass floor, a bubbling liquid beneath the glass, "acid… vats?"
Beneath the glass were conveyor belts dropping corpses into the acid. Hound corpses. Which meant— "the hound wasn't their Lina!" His brain-gears started turning, "But then how does it exist? Do they have more than just that one?"
He continued his way through the factory, deeper into it with every step. The only reason he and his crew had not found the exit already, was that the citadels, while looking the same and having the same core function on the same floors, the layout was completely different. It was rather hard for him to navigate the lower floors of other citadels, due to the darkness, different layout and undead roaming around.
"Why do they even have undead? With the amount I already murdered, at least a thousand people came down here! These idiots!" His voice was ruff and full of exhaustion and pain."2 fricking weeks and I am still stuck down here! My armor will run out of power soon if I don't find any powersource to reload the battery."
He ignored the working machines, he had no idea how he could get the electricity into his battery without dismantling them and possibly alerting the undead of his presence. And dealing with undead would require more power than he had left.
An hour later he had stripped the suit of the non necessary parts which wasted too much electricity and had ventured a few dozen rooms deeper into the factory. His armor was now lighter and his gun was turned off and he donned a small dagger as new primary weapon.
While the factory seemed clear of undead at the beginning, these deeper rooms were flooded with them and he was able to find loose tentacles drinking the acid and pumping it to their main body inside the factory. Yes, the Lina was in the factory.
While the undead should have killed him already, they were not able to. The undead were writhing on the ground in pain while their body slowly and painfully transformed and morphed into something else. Of course, there had been some that had not yet started the transformation process which A24 had to kill with his dagger, but they were no threat for a seasoned warrior.
A24 followed the tentacles, pumping acid to the main body below the glass, in hope it would be weaker in close combat and without the undead. If he could kill it, he would be a hero.
He slowly lowered himself to one of the undead in a rather empty room compared to the others. It was growing dog-like features and he could hear the bones ripping and tearing apart. "Disgusting."
"Are the hounds the… undead?" It was gruesome to think about. People were controlled by tentacles which turned off and replaced all life supporting organs, rendering them dead the moment the tentacle was cut off and then they would be painfully turned into ravenous hounds, hunting for the Lina and feeding it.