As the flare went up, Damian's gut went into freefall. He hadn't been the one to shoot it, but he'd been close enough to hear the roar as if it were within feet of him. It sent a shiver down his spine, and for a moment, it made him reflect on his mortality. He was alone in a megacorp warehouse on a planet full of things that wanted his head, with just a handgun to defend himself. For all that training and experience, he was quite alone and vulnerable.
Damian took a deep breath and peeked from around the corner. The metal corridor stretched around ninety degrees, coming from north to east sharply and then opening into a wide, tall room. A flex-glass window overtook the room's arching ceiling, giving Damian a perfectly clear view of the red of the flare against the twilight-esque Martian mid-day. To his immediate right was the warehouse exit, a massive metal door certainly large enough to fit a freight truck through, which was stuck in a mostly-open position leading to the closed outer airlock. Immediately to his left was the only path in the building from his position that would lead him towards the source of the flare.
He wasn't suicidal. He'd need to be better armed and preferably in a group before even considering going back the way he came or through the other path. He needed to get outside first; find other survivors in the major points of interest on-base, if anyone else had indeed survived. The fact that he had evaded detection up until this point was in part thanks to practice, sure, but it had been mere coincidence that his usual tricks had worked against this new and unknown enemy. His luck had to run out sooner or later if he kept playing it solo.
The wolf reached around for his helmet, attached initially via a one-point anchor on the low side of his vest. Sweat stung his eye and blood still dribbled across his forearms and gloved hands, even still. Swallowing back the urge to puke, the old wolf donned his sealed helmet and prepared to exit the warehouse in search of anything living that wouldn't try to kill him first.
What had he survived the first minutes of...?