(OOC: I finally post again! woo)

Rose hit the ground as the room was plunged into darkness. In the darkness she heard Thomas whisper to her a warning. In the darkness she pressed her hands against the cold floor. In an instant a short wall shot up. It wasn't extremely thick, but it would be able to give them some cover. As the lights shot back on, Rose ducked behind her little wall but it was already beginning to be pelted with gunfire. Pressing her hands on the ground again she closed her eyes and focused. This techinque was a little more difficult than just making a spear, but it was much more useful against opponants with automatic weapons. By channeling the reaction through the ground, she was able to make a small section under the assailants shoot out of the ground in a mess of spikes.

"We need to get out of here!" She shouted over the gunfire.

Jax had one eye squeezed shut and was staring intently along the sights. Quite precisely, he picked off two guards that were closing in on Rose. He swivelled slightly and took off another who was spinning his gun towards Kaitlin and Simon.

Then there was that horrible silence. That silence that comes in the wake of awe-inspiring violence. Wolf had already murdered almost everyone, and Jax, Rose, and Thomas had accounted for the rest. Nevertheless, Jax ran down and got behind the couch, pointing his gun at the door.

"I've got perimeter."

The interrogation was not going to last too long, Jason could already see Simon was clearly distressed and wasn't giong to be able to convincingly lie to him.

Simon blinked a couple times, while Kaitlin punctuated Jason's question by jabbing Simon in the head with the pistol.

Simon stammered, then found his voice. "Mastermind...no, he wouldn't be able to utilize the Phoenix code. That project was deleted before he even manifested. Nobody knows who did it, but it was gone before Mastermind was even coded. And even if it was, we only designed it to work with a specific AI algorithm that Mastermind didn't posess, nor could he have acquired. Yes, there is a chance he could've caught an AI that did posess this algorithm, since there was one in existence at the time, but..."

Simon trailed off.

"Yes?" Jason said, waving the gun a bit to try and get Simon's attention.

Simon suddenly seized up, mouth open in a noiseless scream, and he began convulsing and pitched over as Kaitlin released her grasp on him in surprise. Simon lay there, frothing at the mouth.

Jason ran over, and used his PDAP to run a system check. "Shit...something's interfered with him IRW, maybe he set himself to forcibly disconnect if someone got too close to what he knows."

His system diagnosis caught something else. "Apparently this mansion is also set to delete itself in the next two minutes. We might want to get moving...now!"

He contacted everyone on the team. "We're getting out of here, we got all we're going to get right now."

***

Meanwhile, all the possible exits had been sealed off by the mansion's programming, except for the front, and that was now guarded by two 8 foot tall behemoths in heavy battle armor, armed with a laser rifle and two shoulder-mounted machine guns.

Needless to say, the CF troopers were surprised when they saw the monsters, and quickly took cover as bullets tore up the main foyer

"We need to get rid of those guys and fast!" Jason radioed.

OOC: and no, don't think it'll be easy.

(( YES, NEW GLASSES! ))

Wraith stepped out into the foyer and disarmed one guard with his cane, then knocked the other unconscious with a swift haymaker, only to find the two behemoths blocking the only exit. Needless to say, he got his ass out of the way fast.

"What the shit?!"

~CF Base Ops Room~

Tia sat forward in a command chair. "What the shit?"

"What? What is it?"

"No, that's what Wraith just said right here," Tia answered, pointing at the screen. "But I've never seen this type of coding before...

"Rrrr, I wish I could get in there and help..." she added.

"Why don't you?"

"I can't." Tia gestured at the screens. "Nobody can. Simon locked everybody out."

Jason emptied one of the guns he was carrying into the armored soldier closer to him. The soldier's armor simply deflected the bullets and he didn't even stagger.

Fuck i might as well be shooting blanks he thought.

"Rose, is there anything you might be able to create that could take these behemoths down?" he asked from across the foyer.

Jax was very lightly armed, and wanted his rifle back.

"Can anyone see any open points in the armor?"

He stood and emptied the remainder of his gun into the behemoth to no effect. Quickly, he dove over to Wolf and then ran for cover while he reloaded.

"If we can cut our way in, that should take care of the problem."

As Thomas hid from the bullets, his gloves were crackling with sparks.

"Vell, ah may not 'ave a vay to keel them. 'owever, I MAY be ahble to crripple them slightly."

His hand reached out from cover momentarily. Instantly, large amounts of electricity ripped from the glove and zapped the two battle armors. Unless they were made to withstand electric impulses of that size, he could at least hope that the weapon tracking systems were fried.

"Where is Ambassador LaFleur?" Kagemusha asked making sure he had J2 in his sights.

"Right here..." Jade appeared in front of Kagemusha and hit him with a right cross across his jaw. "Now what might I ask is so important that you two would need to attempt to disable my security and knock out my AI? It seems to me that you're both being hostile, so I will respond in kind." Jade leveled two glocks at the AI and spoke into her comm. "Monk, we have intruders. Would you like to join in on this fight dear?"

Kagemusha removed his mask. "I think you dented it." Crow said. He took out his signature Fedora and put it on. " He put the mask in his cloak that turned to an overcoat. He holstered his gun. "Told you, M4 this was the easy way."