The Colonel ordered the Machine Gun be set up at the end of the hall facing backwards to cover their rear while the rest of the group advanced. As they cleared a few more rooms, still as bloody as before, they linked back up with Rae and Buddy who were sweeping an entire hallway with successive laser fire. Adam, along with his Gunner allies, managed to clean up who was left in the hallway and then moved on, leaving Rae and Buddy to their own devices.
Adam did ask why he was the only one who had guards on him but was informed by the Colonel that Deccanus should have had Gunners on him too, same with Pearl. However given the nature of how aggressive the two of them fought they likely got split off from their escort. Mira disappeared very early into the fight and he had no idea where she went so giving her guards was impossible. Harrison did not go into any more detail but it was clear he left out mention of Eve and the various robots Adam had under his employ, it seemed like Colonel Harrison did not see a need to grant them an escort. And then, when it came to Adam, he was moving with the main unit as they hunted down cultists so his guard was also the attacking force.
Explanations aside the Gunners were now stretched quite thin between the injured and dead members and the various others handling operations elsewhere but the battle was so chaotic that there were no clear battle lines. Every room was a mess of conflict. In some rooms it would already be clear and garrisoned with some Baxter Brigade troops, or Gunners, or any other allied forces in the area. Some rooms would be an active battlezone as the two forces clashed for supremacy and control over the space in a bloody hand to hand melee or a firefight. And then there were the rooms the cultists were deeply entrenched in, where they had won a fight against the would-be invaders or had maintained their control since the beginning. This last room type in particular was especially dangerous as the cultists inside were just waiting for a fight.
However Adam and the Colonel had a goal in mind, they were not here to systematically eliminate every single cultist in the compound. Instead they wanted to kill the leader. Adam had no idea where to find him but suspected that, if he were to be anywhere, a religious man would be in his church, in the auditorium where he had seen the cult leader giving his sermon. So, without any better ideas Adam's group cleared rooms on their way towards the auditorium to hopefully find the man in charge.
As they kicked open the door to the auditorium they found it was empty, save for one. The cult leader, standing on the stage, dramatically, right behind a glass wall.
The Colonel wasted no time shooting it but found the glass was actually bullet proof glass, preventing any easy measure to break through. Adam heard something from above at nearly the same time the Colonel's shot rang out but paid it no mind for the moment. Instead he was fully focused on his target standing before him.
"Ah! Guests! Welcome to our inner sanctum! The stage which we have set for the world to evolve to the next transformation! For humanity to be uplifted and-" He began, starting a sermon right in front of them only to be interrupted by the Colonel.
"Didn't ask, don't care." He said coldly. "We are here to kill you."
"I have no fear of death, lost little lambs, but what I do fear is that you are the ones who will die today." He said as a smile slowly grew on his face. Adam then began to smell something, something weird. But he couldn't quite put his finger on it.
"I said, I don't care what you have to say. Just die." Harrison said as he fired at the bullet proof glass again, only serving to slightly crack it a bit more.
It was after this that one of the Gunners began to cough, and then another, and then another, and then Colonel Harrison. Adam had no idea what was happening but clearly whatever he was smelling was dangerous so, quickly, he threw on his gas mask without any further delay.
While he watched the Gunners struggle to breath a bit and start to act a bit manic he looked up to the ceiling and saw that the sprinkler system had turned on. But rather than outputting the green mist he had seen during the sermon, instead it was some kind of very faint yellow-orange cloud.
It was then that things started to get weird. At first the Gunners stopped coughing and began to act erratically. One cried out in terror and fired his entire magazine into the wall where nothing stood. Another two immediately got into blows with each other. Another dropped his gun entirely and curled up into a ball, cowed. Even Colonel Harrison was acting odd, bashing his head against the wall in some desperate attempt to achieve something.
Adam, for his sake, was seeing weird things beyond just the display around him. The room had an almost kaleidoscopic effect to it. The ground seemed slightly wavy and the color of the walls seemed brighter than before. However, more than that, the cult leader, still standing on the stage, watching gleefully as this all unfolded before him, now had wings made of light. A rainbow pattern that shone as if it were made of stained glass. It was both biblical in design and entirely hellish. Adam had no idea what was going on, but one thing was clear. The gas they had inhaled was giving them all hallucinations. Adam, who was wearing a gasmask, was clearly not as badly affected as the Gunners, but since he had breathed some in already he was not without his own hallucinations.
Adam tried to fire at the bullet proof glass again, just as Colonel Harrison did before him and actually managed to break through, but found, to his dismay, that there was another layer of bullet proof glass behind it. This was definitely not here when he was here last. Or was it? Maybe it was deployable, or maybe they recently installed it, or perhaps it even existed from before the world ended? Whatever the reason, the cult leader was safely behind a wall such that he could be seen but not touched.
Adam also had other problems as one of the Gunners who was yelling out in delirium was now charging at him, ready to attack him. Adam had no choice but to holster his gun and prepare for the grapple. As he was grabbed by the Gunner he watched as the cult leader laughed.
"You see now that we are naught but the weak minded fools made flesh into these mortal coils! Father Hope had a vision for us! And I intend to see it through. Good day gentlemen, I have places to be now." He said with an almost casual indifference at the end as he began to exit to the side of the stage, out of Adam's reach.
"No!" Adam yelled through his gas mask as he struggled against the Gunner grappling him. In normal circumstances he wouldn't be having as much trouble with one single Gunner. They were good but not nearly at the level of Adam's enhanced body. However Adam was still suffering from the effects of having fought Torusk and, as such, he was struggling to keep a firm grip on the man trying to strangle him, even if his footing was solid. Simply put his hands lacked the necessary grip strength to overpower him.
All Adam could do was watch, helplessly, as the cult leader slowly made his way to the side of the stage where he planned to flee from this battle. If he managed to get away this all might be for naught. Of course the cult would still be crippled but if the leader was alive the cult was too, and that was a danger not only for Chicago but the entire world.
However, before Adam could despair, as the cult leader made his way off the stage he was suddenly slightly lifted into the air, arched back, as then a spurt of blood came from through his chest. A moment later Mira de-stealthed and materialized behind him, having impaled him with a chinese officer's sword she must have procured from somewhere.
Adam then watched as she pulled the sword from the cult leader's body, letting him fall to the ground, bleeding out, and then, in one full effort swing, cleaved his head off his shoulders.
Not a moment after she finished that she ran over to the podium where Adam once saw the cult leader give his sermon from and watched as she pressed a hidden button, stopping the release of the gas from above.
Of course it was too late for the Gunners in the room who were already affected and for Adam, who had already inhaled some, but it was better than letting it spew out endlessly.
By now Adam was losing the grapple with the deranged Gunner as he tried to strangle Adam with a maddened look in his eyes. That was, until Pearl burst through the door and grabbed the man by his head, pulled him off Adam, and then threw him across the room. Adam fell to the floor, choking a bit as he tried to catch his breath from inside his gasmask. He turned to Pearl and with the little air he gathered he gave her an order.
"Pearl! Knock these men out! The gas… It has driven them crazy!" Adam forced himself to say through the little oxygen he had breathed in, coughing part way through.
"Pearl understands. Pearl help humans." Pearl then began to, systematically, and quite easily, overpower every single Gunner in the room knocking them all out with some blunt force trauma. Well… one might be dead. She may have hit him too hard, but the rest were certainly injured but not dead.