Atlas Biotech Corporate Office | Outside Overton, Nevada | Day 3
It was light out now, somehow. Valerie didn't pretend to understand the inner workings of the Zone. That implied there were any inner workings. The place ran on a sort of wonderland-logic that she could never really wrap her head around. The sun had just begun to peek over the horizon, casting hues of red and orange out across the fleeting night sky. Stars dissipated and vanished from view. The pale glow of the moon replaced by the sun's heat. Valerie watched it with a mix of awe and dread. Awe at they had survived the night, in spite of everything.
Dread, at the thought of what they were headed towards.
The Woman in Red was an aberration, yes. The Church would no doubt put up a fight, of course. She expected it. She had always expected it, but the confirmation of those expectations was comforting in a way. Now she knew that a fight was on the horizon. She just wished Miller was there to help guide her through it.
Valerie missed the old man. Sure, he was a violent, conspiracy-obsessed alcoholic, but the man was the closest thing she had to a best friend anymore. Sure, there was Yuki, who was thankfully not dead after the previous night's incident. Salk was more of a purposefully distant acquaintance than anything. The others were just strangers. Strangers with guns, strangers all there for this reason or that. Strangers she felt an obligation to keep alive.
She stood in the window-frames that peppered the front of the Corporate Office, leaning against the bare metal with a cigarette in hand. She'd tried to stop dozens of times, but since everything fell apart, it was the only thing she ever could go back to. The embers crackled, dropping ash to the floor near her boots, where it mingled in with the desert sand and shattered glass.
Valerie had abandoned the matte-green jacket and the shirt. The blood was starting to smell, and she didn't want to be reminded of the color red anymore than she had to. All that remained were her pants, her boots, and a dirty gray tank top. She'd been careful to wrap the mutations, passing them off as simple wounds by dressing them with gauze and paper-tape. It was a stop-gap measure, and one that wouldn't even really work anyway.
Her hand shuddered a bit as it felt the ridge of the teeth, still growing out of her shoulder. A molar had come in now too, making for a near-complete set of upper teeth, jutting out of her back like a tumor. She'd found patches of red, scarred tissue along her thigh.
Radiation poisoning, maybe?
She couldn't say for sure.
Out in the plaza proper, most of the Nazi corpses were gone. Bits and pieces remained here and there. A hand here, a patch of skin there, a few splatters of blood over there. It was all rather macabre. No fully intact corpses though. The Zone had saw to that. She could see the tracks of all manner of creatures in the dirt. Some looked eerily human. The corpse in the center of it all, strung up and mutilated, marked as a "HERETIC", however, had remained untouched.
Even Zone monsters knew tainted meat when they saw it.
Valerie flicked the cigarette off into the dirt, leaving it as she stepped back up into the office building.
Tired eyes flicked over the rest of the group. She hadn't slept much, save for a few token moments where she'd passed out from exhaustion. She damned the idea of sleep. She damned the idea of going back to that wretched place, of seeing what she'd seen. As the others began to rouse from their sleep, she spoke.
"Alright, everyone. Get your stuff together. We're back on the road in an hour."
The same eyes flicked to Giuseppe.
"Except you. You stay here until we're gone."
The Chapel | Outside Moapa, Nevada | Day 3
Outside, the storm was beginning to fade away, letting in some of the desert sun through it's gray barricade. The clocks would say it was the next day, even if it had been the previous day a mere hour before. Such was the way of things in the Zone. Time was a flat circle there.
In the deep depths of the Chapel, Jen and SIlvas stood. Silvas slipped a bit on the mossy steps. He mentioned something about a flashlight, and Jen gave a quiet smile. She reached to the Jumper, still firmly planted on her left wrist. Even with the device itself inactive, there were a few functioning knobs on the side. She fumbled with them for a moment, until one finally fell into place with a quiet click. An eerie, pale green glow began to emanate from the device's screen. The illumination wasn't much, only providing enough light to see a few feet ahead, but it was something. Jen's strangely genuine smile was plastered with the dim green light.
"Let there be light."
She cringed a bit at the line. Her wit was as dull as ever.
Jen ignored her own self-depreciation, instead focusing on the task at hand. She kept the pistol aimed into the darkness, following Silvas as they dug deeper and deeper into the Chapel's guts. Heat began to file up through the corridor. Not like heat from a fire. Like heat from a living being. The kind of body heat one might feel if they pressed their face against another's skin. It Jen on edge, hairs standing up on the back of her neck. Beads of sweat began to emerge from her pores. The heat was just at the edge of intolerable.
A faint sound drew her attention to one of the walls.
She drew in close, planting her ear against the mossy stone. It was a heartbeat. Slow, methodical. The sounds of squelching organs and shifting muscle. Jen drew back, her face disgusted.
"Silvas, I don't think we should-"
Darkness surrounded her, and nothing more. Silvas was gone, disappeared further down the corridor.
"-be here."
Her words were meek. Jen felt uneasy now. Her guts, like those behind the walls, curled into a knot. She slotted the pistol into the holster on her side. Not so much out of the fear of shooting Silvas (deliberately or by accident, it didn't matter) and moreso out of the realization that firing the gun in such a small space was a profoundly stupid idea. She had already beaten off tinnitus once. She wasn't keen on doing it again.
Further and further down into the chasm she went, Silvas just barely visible up ahead.
Her unease was palpable as she called out to him.
"Dude, we-we should go. Like now. Something's not right down here."
Outside Dry Lake, Nevada | Day 3
"Well, I'm going to haul you back to Site-"
Clarice was cut off as others jumped out of seemingly nowhere. First, an awkward looking man that promptly puked on her foot, then shoved a gun in her face. The sheer oddity of the whole exchange was punctuated when he spoke. The fact that a woman in woodland camo was dumped out of thin air too didn't help things.
“Oh God, I am so sorry, this always happens when I talk to girls…”
She was about to open her mouth to speak when he cut her off again.
“Can I have a do-over? That would have looked so cool had I just not thrown up. Please? No? Okay…”
Once again, he cut her off, this time with the barrel of a pistol. She was preempted from speaking again, this time via the butt of the rifle, right square in the back of her head. She collapsed on top of Miller, nearly unconscious but not quite. Miller sighed, taking Spencer's arm and pulling himself out from underneath the woman. Miller felt pain all throughout his body. A thorough ass-kicking would do that to a person. He was just starting to speak when the crack of a rifle exploded across the landscape, and a spatter of blood sprayed across Miller's face.
Spencer dropped like a rock, a hole punched clean through his neck. Miller watched, dumbstruck, as a thin line of smoke came out of the hole in the man's neck. The wound had been cauterized. He knew exactly what kind of weapon did that, and his eyes began moving to scan the area. There had to be more Initiative troopers around.
Bushes rustled off the side of the highway, and Miller watched with a mix of fear and fascination as a strange form emerged. It vaguely resembled a human, but it was distinctly different. As it stepped into the moonlight, it became apparent who the shooter was. A machine. Standing about six feet tall, composed of all manner of mechanical junk. Pieces of scrap metal bolted at odd angles, just barely covering sections of tubing and copper wiring. He could see bits and pieces of old radio components, coupled with an ancient, broken televison making up the majority of it's chest. It was a vague simulacrum of the human form; two arms, two legs and a head, but metal rather than flesh. An ancient 8mm camcorder made up the majority of it's head. A light poncho was draped over it's right arm, looking like something pulled straight out of a spaghetti western.
In the machine's hands was a large, bulky looking rifle of obviously alien design. Sleek black metal tapering off at a sharp point, with trigger at the back near the stock. No magazine was visible, but by the low hum it emitted and the blue glow from within, Miller figured it was probably energy based. It kept it aimed at the two men left standing, flicking between the two with the efficiency Miller expected of a machine.
Suddenly, from a radio speaker on it's shoulder, a set of mechanical beeps and whirrs burst forth.
".... . .-.. .-.. ---"
"Uh, say again?"
Miller scratched his head in confusion. The sound of Clarice's voice from below made him nearly jump out of his skin.
"He said 'Hello'."
Sighing, Miller reached down and helped her to her feet. He couldn't say why. Honor amongst shadowy government employees, perhaps? Well, former shadowy government employees, in his case. Clarice dusted herself off and collected her weapon. She racked the bolt a bit on the pistol, patting sand out of the receiver as she spoke.
"You know this doesn't mean anything. I still have to bring you in."
The machine's voice cut in again. Harsh bleeps that conveyed little emotion.
".-- .... --- / .- .-. . / - .... . ... . / -- . -. ..--.."
Clarice brushed a tuft of blonde hair out her eye as she spoke, turning her attentions to the machine.
"They're part of the group I was talking about. Miller-"
She motioned to the man in question, then to Winston.
"-Winston-"
Then her hand gestured to the corpse on the ground. Spencer twitched occasionally, but the life had obviously drained from the man. Miller wondered how much it actually hurt when he died, or if it even hurt at all. Must have been a shame, he figured. Stuck living and dying forever. Clarice seemed bemused by the man's death.
"-and of course, the Zombie. Spencer."
".-- .... .- - / .. ... / --.. --- -- -... .. . ..--.."
"He can't die. The people I work for have been trying to get a hold of him for a while."
"- .... .- - / .. ... / ..- -. ..-. --- .-. - ..- -. .- - . .-.-.- / - .... . / --- - .... . .-. ... / -.-. .- -. / -.. .. . --..-- / - .... --- ..- --. .... ..--.."
"Yup."
Miller raised his hands in a mix of frustration and confusion. As if the universe itself had heard his confusion and felt the need to add it's two cents, Miller could only watch with dumb horror as the moon twitched in the sky. It was like something out of a video-game. The pale object shivered, along with the rest of the stars. Clarice lacked the same bewilderment, instead regarding the phenomena with the same irritation that one would regard a fly with. The moon shivered in the sky once more, and then, suddenly, it was day. The sun had simply supplanted the moon in an instant. Bright light nearly blinded Miller, who could only stutter a few obscenities of irritation.
"Ok, what the fuck is going-"
Before he could respond, something clasped on his arm. Cold metal against skin. He looked, and with a mix of rage and terror, realized that Clarice had handcuffed her arm to his.
"-and why did you just do that?"
She stared at him and shrugged. She looked even younger standing next to him than she did with her boot on his throat. He knew it was a facade, though. He'd seen her when she first started training, and that was ten years ago. She had to be in her early thirties by now.
He knew that the benefits package for the Initiative was good, but he needed to figure out what she was using. Skin cream? Sauna? Immortality Pills? No, no, he thought.
Probably Sauna.
He was interrupted from his diatribe as the machine spoke again.
".-- .... .- - / .- -... --- ..- - / - .... . / --- - .... . .-. ... ..--.. / - .... . / .... --- --- -.. . -.. / -- .- -. / .- -. -.. / - .... . / --- - .... . .-. .-.-.-"
Clarice flashed the first smile he'd seen her make since she'd attacked. It was unnerving.
"They'll probably come out, soon enough."
She gestured to the open space nearby, where Winston and Spencer had emerged from. Clarice rubbed her head, wincing a bit in pain, before turning to Miller. Her free hand gestured towards the robot.
"That's Asimov, by the way. He's cool."
"He's a fucking clunker."
"- .... .- - .----. ... / .-. .- -.-. .. ... - .-.-.-"
Clarice shot him a disgusted look, as though he'd just called someone a kike. She shook her head, then turned to Winston, taking on an authoritative tone. She sounded more like a cop than anything. Miller struggled against the handcuffs a bit as she spoke, and he could see the woman flash him a few sideways glances.
"You. Winston. Keep your piece stowed. I'm with the Feds. Your buddy Miller has some questions to answer, and I'm taking him to one of our safehouses."
Her attentions turned to the Lieutenant.
"You. Chill. I'm on your side."
She gestured to the patch on her shoulder. An eye, the pupil replaced with a crosshair, a half circle surrounding it. Miller knew the symbol. The Department of Anomalous Affairs, the Initiative's biggest front. He felt disgust, disgust that he'd ever been involved in this madness.
Then, she turned to the invisible space where the portal laid.
"Walter. Other guy. I know you think I don't know you're there."
Her free hand came up, tapping on a pair of nearly invisible, plasticine safety glasses in front of her eyes. Miller almost chuckled. Kids these days, relying on their future-tech. Back in my day-
Jesus, Miller thought. I am getting old.
