Crysis: Legion Read Online Free PDF Page B

Only I’m not finding it. And whatever cocktail the N2 fed into my brain is not all it could be, because the obvious answer has been stomping around over my head for the past twenty minutes and I was either too stupid or too chickenshit to see it.
    But yeah. Eventually I figure it out.
    And I swear to God, I can hear the bogeyman dancing an eager little jig of joy as I start climbing the stairs.
    Broadcast Intercept (decrypted): 23/08/2023 09:35
39.5 MHz (gov/nongov shared, land mobile)
Apparent signal source: CELL Field Command, Battery Park Interceptor: Anonymous (via Edward “Eddie” Newton, Radio Free Manhattan)
Voice 1: —is Cobalt Seven. Think he came this way. Spreading to search.
Voice 2: Yeah, uh, this is Cobalt Four. We got camera footage from the containment fence. Moving fast, man. Never saw anything like that before.
Voice 3: Fuck are we fighting here? Is he one of
them
?
Voice 4: That’s need-to-know, soldier. All
you
need to know is don’t take any chances. Lethal force, soon as you get eyes on.
Cobalt 4-A: You believe this mess, man? They took out everything: the EMAT teams, the doctors, our guys. There’s nothing left.
Voice 4: Stay sharp, people. Quarantine protocols. You see anything move in there, you kill it.
Dead Air—47 seconds. Following exchange appears to have been broadcast accidentally, possibly due to a jammed transmit switch.
Cobalt 4-B: So you think he took down that Ceph ship?
Cobalt 4-A: How the fuck should I know, man? I look like a Squid to you?
C4-B: I’m just saying, it wasn’t us. And if he
did
shoot it down, well …
C4-A: Well what?
C4-B: You know. The enemy of my enemy and all that.
C4-A: The enemy of
my
enemy doesn’t go around blowing the shit out of
his own guys
.
C4-B: There is that.
C4-A: Shit, man. Past few days, there’s lots of enemies to go around for every—hey, is that—?
C4-B: What?
C4-A: Over there, on the waterfront up on the roof. That a Squid?
C4-B: Yeah, one of those fuckers—
C4-A:
grunts
, or—
C4-B: No, look, there’s
two
of them.
C4-A: You sure? Looks—
C4-B: No, man, look, there’s definitely two. They just look like one big motherfucker because they’re in close like—
C4-A: What are they doing up there?
C4-B: They’re
fighting
, man. They’re fighting
each other …
C4-A: What the fuck. Why would—
C4-B: Dude, the smaller one. I think it’s human.
C4-A: That’s just exoskel. They’re all blobs inside.
C4-B: No, man, I’ve got him scoped, he’s definitely—
C4-A: Holy shit, that’s our guy! That’s
Proph—
C4-B: Cobalt Oversight! Cobalt Oversight! We have eyes on Primary! Repeat,
we have eyes on—
Signal squelched at source.
Transmission ends 23/08/2023 09:38.
     
    So this is how it is. No cutesy musical sign language, no guys with bumpy foreheads saying
Resistance Is Futile
or
Kneel Before Zod
, no sexy alien hive queens keeping our hero busy with butt sex while her minions turn our children into veal cutlets. No small talk at all, unless you count the sound it makes when it sees me:kind of a stuttering hollow croak, like a cheap voice synthesizer trying to gargle.
    And then ET
brings
it, motherfucker.
    In that first second I’m surprised by how human it looks. Sure, the legs have too many joints and the arms don’t have any—more like segmented tentacles with hands, like Doc Ock from Spider-Man—but there’s two of each, right where they’re supposed to be. Kind of a helmet on top with two compound clusters of orange lights where you’d expect eyes. It’s all metal, though, so I’m thinking either
robot
or
armor
.
    And then it fires, point-blank, and I’m flat on my back and I should be dead but I’m not. In the next second it’s on me like a fucking panther and I can see the meat
inside
all that metal: grayish, translucent, like a jellyfish. Dim brownish orange blobs deep inside that have to be organs, four thick fleshy tentacles flailing out the back. And one part of me’s thinking
What the hell kind of armor