Ottawa Burning on the Night of Terror

As if the results of the interrogation the floater had not been disturbing enough, the visitors started all of a sudden displaying the reason for the relative silence. They had been preparing ways to break us mentally, to eradicate entire cities. Bombing from the sky and sending terror troops to slaughter civilians. They were not here to negotiate and days for the mankind started to look very much numbered. XCOM got an emergency call from Canada: Ottawa was burning. XCOM had no other options but send its best men to deal with it, to show the aliens that they have no business here.

Skyranger dumped Broden, Sureshot, Ironside, Snake Catcher and Proxy straight in the middle of all hell broken loose. Distant screams could be heard from everywhere and the night was filled with foul-smelling smoke, random gunfire and chaos. The squad started their advance towards the first administrative building with extreme caution and saved a few scurrying citizens from their inevitable doom. Proxy and Snake Catcher took the side door, while the other three advanced towards the front. Inside, a handful of floaters noticed them and started to ploy their own attack to keep their ground. Laser rifles cut them down like butter, but this proved to stir something much more evil. Arachnid-like creatures with long and sharp limbs, three meter long and a meter and a half high rushed through the office doors inside. They were fast, much too fast for easy negotiation. Cutting the civilians in the room in half, they both rushed towards the front door.

Numerous shots were missed on these elusive and menacing new enemies. Judging by the way they dismantled poor civilians, it started to look that they can rip apart trained soldiers with equal ease. One had already crashed through the front door and was quickly advancing on Sureshot, who was kneeling on the grass behind the front terrace, ready to take aim. Sureshot hit it square on its head, its chitinous skin gave way and was severely seared by the laser beams, but it did not take a single sidestep. Lifting its foreclaws high in the air and looming above Sureshot things were one Proxy away from taking a serious turn to south. Proxy hit the alien's head spot-on, it roared and fell next to Sureshot, just second before shredding him to pieces.

Inside, something had woken up from the corpse of a civilian. A horrifying zombie-like rendition of what was your average enter-hitting office Joe had tried to start making its way towards the squad, but it was cut down after a lengthy volley of fire while Proxy was negotiating with the skittering threat. Obviously these creatures were able to spawn something inside their victims and use them as cocoon for additional terror forces. A woman was slaughtered on similar manner to the front door by the other alien, who seemed to be wounded and bleeding, but completely unhindered by any damage it had already taken. Ironside was crouching beneath the terrace line just three meters away from it.

[TACTICAL COMMS TRANSCRIPT]

Ironside: I'm three meters off this whatever it is, should I consider stunn--

Proxy: NO!

[TRANSCRIPTION ENDS]

Ironside unloaded a laser beam at it and cut it in half. What he did not notice was another zombie-like creature, that had risen from where the young woman was torn to shreds. It grabbed his head and it was too late to realize that the zombie-like creature was much too strong for a man. He felt like his neck muscles were giving way, tearing up in the zombie's grasp and his vision went all blurry, red and black. Sureshot ended the zombie's second life, but Ironside was already oblivious to this, having passed out from the immense amount of pain.

After that, aliens seemed to retreat and Ottawa was saved from the aliens without any losses, although things were balancing on the ledge for most of the night. Ironside ended up all right, although hospital stay was to be extended. The zombie had literally almost ripped his head off, after all.