by S. A. Lusher
As he approached it, it opened up, revealing Drake. “What the hell happened?!” he cried.
“Blew up a monster,” Greg replied.
“Well, congrats...what kind of monster?”
“The one Eric faced. A Bandersnatch.”
“Oh shit, he’s not going to be happy about that.”
“No...I’m going to go see if it was dead, then I’ll join you.”
“I’ll be waiting.”
Greg made his way back through the maze. As soon as he stepped out, back into the open area of the hangar, he saw that the Bandersnatch was dead. There were flaming bits and pieces of it scattered all over the place. Perfect. Feeling good, Greg hurried back into the garage and as he approached Drake, he froze as he heard an unfamiliar voice.
“Hello? Is anyone there?”
He looked at Drake, who looked right back at him. They both began hunting around for the origin of the voice.
“I repeat, can anyone hear me over there?”
“Here. It’s coming from here,” Greg said, coming to stand before the terminal he’d used earlier. Someone was calling them over the base’s internal comms system. He hit the reply button. “Who is this?” he asked.
“Well, who is this?”
“I asked you first.”
“Fair enough, I suppose. I am Doctor Volker.”
“You’ve got to be shitting me. The one person we find and it’s fucking you?” Greg replied.
“Ah, so you’re familiar with me.”
“Familiar enough to know that you fucking had us kidnapped and experimented on who knows how many fucking people to produce who knows how many fucking Mutants-”
“Okay, that’s enough of that,” Volker said, cutting him off. “First of all, capturing you was not my idea at all. In fact, I was against it. Blackmore is the one with the stick up his ass about Anomalous Ops. Second, I didn’t experiment on anyone but human garbage. Terrorists that have no problem blowing up coffee shops, rapists, cutthroat murders, and serial killers. The garbage of humanity. That was my condition for working on this project, I’ll have you know. Now I don’t have time to get into an ethics debate with the likes of you, Greg Bishop. Yes, I can see you now on the camera, you and Drake Winters and Eric Starck. How many have you three killed? Don’t bother answering.
“The reality of the situation is that we need each other. Here’s what I have: a way off this planet, a way into that ship up there and three of your friends.”
“Who?” Greg asked immediately.
“Genevieve Topaz, Jennifer Collins and Eve Brookes. They’re alive and well. Safe and secure and unconscious at this moment, like you three were supposed to be.”
“What about the others? Were there others?”
“No, not as far as I know. Now listen, that’s what I have. What I need is for you to run down some things for me out there. The first and foremost being that the primary reactor is offline and the auxiliary generators can’t handle the strain. There’s a Freeze Storm on the way here and without that reactor, we’re all going to die of the cold. So find an infopad and a radio, and I’ll be able to help guide you through this.”
Greg resisted the urge to groan.
Instead, he got to work.
CHAPTER 08
–Cold–
“All right, so what the hell am I going to have to do?” Greg asked.
He’d found an infopad and a radio and was now standing before the terminal he’d been talking with Volker through earlier. He was in a bad fucking mood. Now that the power was back on, it was getting warmer, and his body was coming back online.
And fuck did it hurt.
He just hoped there wasn’t any kind of damage from the cold.
“First, set the radio to frequency echo and punch the red button four times, with one second pauses between each press,” Volker replied.
Greg sighed and looked over the little earpiece. He found a spin-wheel on the back and rotated it to Echo, then hit the button four times, slowly.
“Uh...it isn’t working,” he said after a moment.
“Did you remember to turn it on?” Volker replied.
Greg heaved a sigh and activated the radio, then repeated the process.
“Not exactly too bright, are you?”
“Oh go fuck yourself, Volker. I’m dead on my feet, freezing, starving and in a lot of pain,” Greg snapped as he slipped the earpiece in.
“Fair enough. Now, let me test it...” The voice from the terminal was suddenly coming from the earpiece. “Can you hear me?”
“Yeah, I hear you. Now what?”
“Good. Now, turn on the infopad and plug it into the terminal. I’ll upload schematics and codes for the base. And make sure you turn on its wireless function, so I can update it on the fly. Lots of things need doing before we can all get out of here.”
“Fine,” Greg grumbled, doing as he was told. He waited until the infopad let out a short chime. “Is it done?”
“Yes, it’s finished.”
He retrieved the pad and checked over the information that was being displayed now. It was a large, topographical map of the facility. Apparently it was called Polaris Station. It was divided up into five different buildings, each conveniently labeled. Apparently, he was in Building Alpha. Unfortunately, he didn’t know which was what right now. The buildings were arranged in a diamond shape around the central building.
“Okay, I’ve got the map, now what?”
“You’re headed towards the reactor, which is that one in the center, Building Bravo. It’s about a three minute walk and the weather has cleared up somewhat out there...for now. That storm is still on the way and we don’t have much time.”
“I don’t suppose there’s any kind of cold weather gear around here, is there? Or guns? Ammo? Fucking anything I can use?”
“Uh...there should be at least something in a storage closet in the garage. In the northwest corner. As for guns, well...I should be able to guide you to some once you are actually in Building Bravo. Until then, I’m sorry, I don’t have anything.”
“Of course,” Greg muttered, turning and hurrying over to the door the man had indicated. He got to it, opened it up and looked inside. It was a supply closet that had mostly been cleared out, but he did spy some gear: gloves, goggles, a ski-mask and basic leggings and a coat. Well, it would have to do. He hurriedly pulled the stuff on over his jumpsuit, taking a moment to readjust his gear, then turned and headed back to Drake.
“All right, I’m off to fix the reactor and do whatever else Doctor Asshole tells me to do. Lock this place down and keep an eye on Eric,” he said.
“Got it,” Drake replied.
“I can still hear you, you know,” Volker said.
“Yeah, I know,” Greg replied.
Volker sighed but was otherwise silent. Greg got his pistol out and then hurried across the garage. He came out into the hallway, jogged down its length and broke right at the T junction. There, at the corridor’s end, an exit awaited him. He moved over to it and looked outside, through a window set into the door itself. The weather had indeed cleared up, his visibility having doubled or perhaps tripled. He still couldn’t see any other buildings, though. Well, it was just going to have to be enough. Wasn’t that what he was always telling himself?
With a sigh, Greg opened the door and hurried out.
The cold hit him like a hammer, but it was much more manageable this time. He began kicking his way through the snow, following a string of brightly glowing blue light poles that led, hopefully, to the reactor building.
The walk was long, cold, and miserable. Although, as he came upon the reactor building, Greg was grateful that nothing else attacked him. Being outside in the frigid, freezing air was enough of a pain in the ass to deal with. But finally, he found the next building, which came to him slowly out of the curtain of snow and thin gray sunlight. He hit the access button and was immensely grateful when the door opened without complaint.
Greg stepped inside, shivering, pisto
l in hand, and nearly met his end right then and there. A Shadow was further down the short corridor he was in and it was coming right for him. He snapped the pistol up and opened fire, putting five rounds into it.
“You still there?” Volker asked.
“Yeah,” Greg grunted, trembling from the adrenaline spike as he watched the Shadow’s corporeal remains ebb away into the air. “I’m in the building now. What do I do?”
“I see you on the cameras now,” Volker murmured. “Before you even go into the reactor bay itself, which is populated by Mutants and Harvesters, I have to add, you need to make a brief side-stop into the underground portion of the facility. Which, I must also add, is very, very dangerous. It’s completely owned by the creatures.”
“Oh. Fucking wonderful,” Greg muttered.
“The second door on your right will grant you quickest access to the underground area. There’s tunnels that connect all five buildings and house all manner of maintenance areas, utilities and storage bays. You’ll find two different things down there: a weapons cache I hid away earlier, before everything went to hell, and the appropriate tools and repair parts to get the reactor back online. I’ve updated your infopad with the relevant locations. Once you get down there...you’re going to want to hurry. There really are a lot of hostiles in the underground.”
“Yeah, I’ll get right on that,” Greg replied.
He didn’t look forward to putting up with this shit again. But what was the alternative? There were people counting on him. He was trying hard to push the thoughts of the others aside. Eric injured and Drake watching over him, Jennifer, Eve and Genevieve unconscious somewhere. Were they safe? Healthy? Was Volker lying, were they even still alive? Were they here at all? But he couldn’t think about any of that because if he let himself get distracted he was going to wind up a corpse. Greg moved down the hall and opened the door.
He found a small repair area and moved through it, locating a simple hatch in the floor. Kneeling, he hit the access button and the hatch parted, sliding open, revealing a narrow tunnel descending into the earth. With a sigh, he lowered himself into it and began climbing quickly down the ladder, trying to see if anything was below him, but it was exceptionally difficult given the low lighting level and his limited mobility.
Finally, he hit floor and got off the ladder.
He immediately didn’t like where he was.
The ladder had let him out in a mostly empty room. All he had for company were some lockers shoved up into one corner, a disused workbench and a corpse curled up in the far corner. A man in a white jumpsuit who had been pretty shredded. His main problem with the area was how dark it was. Shadows gathered in the corner, and could be housing living Shadows. Or were they living? What the fuck were they?
Questions for later, if ever.
Grateful that at least he wasn’t cold anymore and the worst of the warming-up symptoms had passed, Greg set off into the unknown, as his job so often required. Pistol firmly in hand, he moved up to the only door in the room and opened it up. Nothing but dimly-lit metal out there, so he stepped slowly out, looking left and right. He was in a large, open tunnel that stretched away in both directions, visibility fading quickly due to how much stuff was down there and how bad the light was. Well, fucking great.
With a sigh, he came back in and closed the door, then took a moment to check his infopad. It took him a little bit to figure out how to manipulate it to give him a different view, but he wasn’t going to fucking ask Volker how. Once he clued himself in on the locations of what he needed and determined where he was, he decided immediately that he was going to go after the cache first. A little note said it was locked up in a security locker and had a pass-code attached to it. It was to the right, while everything else was to the left.
Luckily it wasn’t all that far away.
Greg stepped back out and began making his way down the tunnel, trying to find a good balance between hurrying and being careful. Even trying to hurry, it felt like slow going. The first part of the tunnel was fairly clear, but it became clogged with crap after about ten meters. Crates and bodies and forklifts, supplies strewn everywhere, most of the lights out. God, what a fucking nightmare. Greg moved in between a pair of forklifts, stepped over a corpse that had been shredded by Mutants and headed into a narrow alcove created by stacks of crates. He hurried through it, keeping watch, until he arrived at the other side.
Okay, so far, so good.
He came into an open area and spied the door that he was looking for. He hoped that Volker had put something worthwhile in this cache of his. Probably should have asked. Oh well. He jogged across the open space to the door and hit the access button. It slid up, revealing a mostly dark security center. Greg took a moment to check out the gun lockers and anything else in the area, managing to turn up another magazine for his pistol.
Better than nothing.
He found the security locker tucked away in the back of the room and punched in the code. It opened up, revealing...a shotgun, some more ammo for his pistol and a box of shells. He sighed. Well, beggars couldn’t be choosers. He holstered the pistol, loaded up the shotgun and pocketed the spare ammo, then headed back out into the tunnel.
He managed to make it back to his starting point without trouble, but when he began making his way towards the first of the two locations he had to visit, he started running into it. Mutants at first, they went down easily enough with holes punched in their chests. Once they went down, Greg stepped into another open area and found himself facing down a Guardian. He quickly switched back to his shotgun, since he’d been using the pistol to put down the simpler hostiles, and barely managed to get it up in time.
The Guardian raced across the open space, shrieking, reaching for him with long claws stained with blood. He leveled the shotgun and fired off a shell, which exploded into its chest, bursting it and spraying the area down with thick red blood. Unfortunately, in murdering this asshole, he’d attracted the attention of others.
The sounds of growls reached him as Greg took off again, hurrying to get to the first location. He didn’t want to be down here any longer than he had to. He slipped past another overturned forklift, past a toppled scatter of crates and managed to find the door to the supply room he was looking for without having to face anything else. He slipped inside and closed the door quickly behind him as he scanned the room.
His luck held: it was empty. Maybe the freaks outside would forget about him by the time he headed back out.
If only.
He performed a quick search of the room, hunting down two of the parts on Volker’s list. Once he’d found them, as well as an empty toolkit to secure them in, he took a minute to sit down. His head was killing him and he really was exhausted and in pain. A lot of him hurt in small, dull, annoying ways. Greg made himself get up after a moment, knowing he had to go on. If he let himself, he’d just sit there and one minute would become two, which would become five, then half an hour. No, he had to keep going.
That was the only way to get anything done.
Just keep going.
Greg moved over to the door and waited, listening. He couldn’t hear anything, but that didn’t mean they were gone. He hit the button and the door slid open. A Harvester was wandering around and he put it down easily enough. As it died, (thankfully its stomach didn’t burst open), a pair of Mutants came to investigate and he put them down, too. What he wouldn’t give for a silencer. But that seemed to be the end of the immediate supply of bad guys.
Leaving the relative safety of the storage room, Greg slipped back out into the tunnel and began moving quickly and quietly among the debris. His mind kept wanting to shift this way and that, worry about his friends, worry about his own life, about being a failure. That was one he’d been dealing with a lot lately: feeling like a fucking failure. It had been haunting him for a while now, but it had become a part of his everyday life ever since the end of his last big mission. The grief wasn’t really helping the whole situation,
either.
Greg tried to shake off the dark thoughts. Now wasn’t the time for this shit and if he let himself indulge in it, then he really would wind up dead. But fuck was it hard to deal with this crap. He didn’t even really know who to talk to. He’d talked to Drake a few times, but he didn’t feel like dumping all his negative crap on the man, since he was still no doubt going through his own difficulty. That was a genuine, true horror that he had come to realize a lot of people misunderstood. When you lost someone very, very close to you, when they died, it hurt in a way nothing else did. And didn’t just go away. You didn’t just deal with it and move on.
Not after six months.
Not after a year.
Not even ten years.
It wasn’t like a scar, more like an old war wound that never fully or properly healed. It’d be hurting in one way or another until the day you died.
And the fact that he didn’t want to unload all his depressive toxic mentality was his big problem. He didn’t want to do it to anyone, because that just made him feel more like shit. Greg jerked suddenly to the right as he heard a soft sound, like something shifting, and barely managed to get his gun up in time and put down a Shadow that had been lurking between a pair of crates. It had just started to leap out of its hiding spot and was destroyed by the shotgun shell. That was close. He pressed on, almost to his destination now.
Fuck, sometimes he wanted to just throw in the goddamned towel. He kept surviving these stupid situations, over and over again, and sometimes he wondered...would it be so bad if maybe he didn’t? Maybe just let a Shadow jump him and kill him? It’d be over in an instant. But no, he had responsibilities, and that’s ultimately what it came down to, didn’t it? If he didn’t get his job done, people would suffer.
What a great motivation for staying alive.
Greg found the final storage room, cleared it and hunted down the parts. Once he had them secured, he mercifully didn’t have to trudge back the way he’d come. There was a handy access ladder in the final storage room that not only took him back up to the surface, but put him within spitting distance of the reactor core itself.
