Continuity Corporations : Chapter 3 - Forced to Run

JULY 23 2021

A-65 looked at himself in the bathroom mirror and rubbed his eyes. A groggy feeling had settled itself in his chest stomach over the night, one that had evaded detection in the pre-assignment checkup he had received the prior evening. A-1 had questioned him about the fever. He said it would get worse, but this much? A-65 winced. The breaths from his nostrils felt as is if they were leaden with cinders, the air from his lungs genuinely hot against his lips. It was more than an inflammatory fever; it was a genuine lava-like heat that was rising through his trachea like a red-hot poker down his throat. Another wince. The tap was running: he had taken a glass from his meagre kitchen and filled it up with water, glugging it quickly and feeling the heat sizzle and wane. He drank another and the heat departed further, a fullness now in his stomach. Desperation. The heat itched. He drank another and the tickling sensation abated. He rubbed his eyes again. There was no headache, but they felt hot to the touch again, as if he had rubbed chillis in them. It was a searing, stinging pain that was droning in form. Not the most intense pain he had felt – not even as troublesome as the searing in his chest – yet one that was continuous, uncomfortable and bordering upon annoying.

Familiar sensation. Flesh seared from bone, tough as an overcooked steak.

There was a sliding sound in the vestibule that joined A-65's doorway and living quarters. He turned to it. Long and drawn out – something pushing against the smooth floor, a sliding. It was something small. Pushed through the crack between the doorway and floor.

 A beige envelope, a name written upon it in the broad and black letters of a marker pen.

FIONA

He leered through the peep-hole, not having his company mask on. The envelope was heavy, paper thick like carboard yet thin to the touch. No one stood or walked by the hallway. All the adjoining doors were shut. A65 drew back and felt the envelope. There was little within. He turned it around, opening the sleeve to reach within, and frowned. Another written message.

 IN THE COFFIN

Reaching in he felt a small object stuffed between the paper. He pulled it out: it was a key.

Leaving the dorm block was not as difficult now. Perhaps, A-65 thought, that was a benefit of the feverish heat that had risen in his chest. The cold steered away from him as others shivered in the promenade: the key was in his pocket and he pondered as he walked. A short jaunt to the pyramidal atrium was enough time to think, and he wondered deeply about the envelope he had received. Fiona? Who was Fiona? It couldn't have been sent to the wrong person, and he wondered who among the company knew his true name. A handful of people came to mind. A-1, Scalar. The CEO of the company. Perhaps Gemini? He recounted seeing her briefly as he sat in the hospital bed. Burnt and dying. Perhaps the person who initially rescued him from the building, the person who worked for Cohesion and pulled him from the wreckage. He had no idea who they were, though, and he doubted that they would recognise him, masked and held in secrecy as he was.

Scalar was there as he entered the atrium. As were the Epsilon women and Gemini. They were early, stood alert, professional and sleek. Gemini was in her typical garb, though notably bore a gun belt around her waist and a thicker, puffier vest around her torso. Still the gauntlets, still the headpiece. She seemed identical to how she was in Veritas and in training. Ray did not: A-65 could only tell he was looking at her due to seeing her head poking from the bulky armour. All the Epsilon women were in this armour, blue and cubic in form – it looked like a sheer block of metal had been carved in an angular motion to create it, the armour itself all edges and corners with little curves to speak of. Joints were interlocking mechanisms that slid atop one another, plates diverging into chelicerate layers and socketed like the knuckles of a crab. Beneath the cyan-blue plates of armour ran tubes of rubber across the body, an under suit that the larger armour pieces rested upon. Areas sparse of the armour seemed to be tactically placed: at the elbow and knee and neck, at the stomach and waist. Mobility was at the forefront here, the armour protecting all else around it. The suits were massive, largely uniform yet with minor deviations. Each bore a different name across the right shoulder: 7-RAY, 7- ACE, 7-ROE and 7-EVE. It was perhaps one of the defining factors that allowed A-65 to tell the difference between the four women, all aside from Rayleigh bearing large gas mask helmets across their heads. Tubes trailed from the trunk of these suits down to the torso, plugging in at sockets atop the breast, filters at the cheeks and a visor before the eyes. Ace held another helmet and placed it over Rayleigh's head, holding the tubes and connecting them to the sockets as a mechanism clicked at the neck. Sealed shut. Rayleigh flexed her arms and the plates slid atop one another, little sound bar the crinkling of the rubber under suit showing itself. The four of them stood, then, in a row before Scalar. He had his hands behind his back and a strange expression on his face. Contempt or boredom – something like that. A-65 stood next to Gemini, behind Epsilon, and heard Scalar's tapping. The cyan suits – trimmed by patterns of yellow – looked almost alike hazard tape.

There was another debriefing and the elevator descended, not as far as to the Veritas bunker yet to a lower-level car park that seemed to rest directly beneath the aisle that separated the main facility from the dormitory block. Again, A-65 thought it was too large and too empty. The car park lead to a hallway, concrete and grey and lit with sickly light, that lead into another, colder room. Two hatches, tubes trailing above and a vent space at the bottom – an airlock like the hatch to the aisle. It swung open and the coldness bit in: Gemini wrapped her arms around her torso. Stepping out, the hatch lead to a small and lowly gated platform, concrete and dark and raised slightly from the foundations beneath. It was a grid of eight spaces, a selection of large flat pads. A vehicle that A-65 could only describe as a helicopter sat atop one of them, large and triangular and sleek, with a door and ramp that seemed to slide into its hull with little more than a hairline crack showing at its outline. It sat on legs almost insectile in form, with tanks hanging at its side like large, silver lungs. He had no idea what this was, yet the others did not seem to ask questions. The Epsilon women hauled themselves up into the machine, Gemini behind them, A-65 lingering slowly atop the steps. He turned back briefly: through the wind and snow, Scalar did not seem cold. 

The interior of the helicopter-like machine was warm, and as dark and black as the outside. Seats lined the wall, rack-like protrusions above them and a luggage compartment above that. The central isle was empty, and A-65 sat down. Rayleigh stood by the door and reached down, grabbing a handlebar that doubled as a step and hauling it up, magnets taking over and drawing the ramp slowly into the chassis. There was a solid click as the door settled and Rayleigh went to sit down, Eve walking forward into the pilot's compartment with Roe in tow. Ace sat down. Gemini sat down. There was a silence between them; Ace leaned her neck against the sleek back of the chair. 

"Some day, huh?"

 A-65 saw, behind the visor, the eyes of the armoured woman dart down and land upon him. Her voice was modulated through speakers, broadcasted and mechanical in tone. It sounded almost alike A-65's voice, though without the artificial twang that stifled his accent and neutered his pitch.

"Gemini tells me this is your first assignment?"

 There was a calmness in her voice that juxtaposed her stern face. A-65 nodded.

"You're in good hands."

 Nervousness sat in A-65's stomach and the comfort that Gemini and the Epsilon women reassured him with felt distant. Another modulated voice – whether Roe or Eve he could not tell – spoke over an intercom of sorts, words broadcasted throughout the passenger compartment. It would not be long until they reached their point of interest – a designated arrival spot where the flying machine could land, away from the shipment's position yet within reach on foot. A-65 felt a shuddering, quaint and gentle, as the mechanisms atop the roof whirred into action and spun rapidly. Beneath his mask, his expression was confused. He muttered something, voice not passing through the modulator, and the insectile legs of the helicopter withdrew: within but a few seconds of time the helicopter went from being still on the ground to airborne. It sat in the air for a moment, swung around the snowstorm of Mt. Asgard, and hurtled towards its destination. Gemini pulled the body straps over her torso, A65 mimicking her in turn. Rayleigh looked to the two of them.

"How long have you been on sight, A-65?"

 "Just under a week, I think."

"The time flies, trust me. Days blur together. It's only the excitement that separates them, sometimes."

She leaned to a side an placed her armoured elbow against a crate, resting her masked head on her hand. The crate was something she had hauled from the underside compartment and placed beside her earlier, a large metal box adorned with the symbols of chemical hazard like a distasteful graffiti. A-65 was not sure what to make of the crate, or the almost philosophic prose she had stated. He shifted in his seat.

"And what should I expect for excitement?"

 The question seemed to put Rayleigh on the spot. She looked towards him, then to the blue Veritas armband slung across his bicep.

"I would say conflict." She said, "Or mystery. Are you content with that?"

"What would happen if I wasn't?"

 "Then you would be reassigned. You still work for the company. This role was chosen for you, but chosen with intelligence and a... reasonable quantity of estimation. I was hesitant about my own work, but..." there was a pause for a moment; Ace glanced to Rayleigh and A-65 detected a tone of apprehension in her unmasked voice.

"I enjoy it."

Time passed. There were windows in the helicopter, black from the hull side yet translucent from the interior, tinted a dark shade. One sat to A65's right and flanked the ramp-like doorway: he rested his head against the side and looked out of it as the snow and tundra beneath slipped across his view. It seemed endless; he had never seen landscapes such as these before his hiring at Continuity Corporations. His former home seemed impossibly far, and the thought of that afar place situated a pang of guilt or worry in his chest, which twisted around the feverish heat and made his stinging eyes feel heavy. He looked back to Gemini: the woman's expression was focused. She, like him, had lost herself in thought. Eventually, something caught the woman's attention: she turned to look at A-65 and perhaps sensed something behind his neutral mask's expression.

"Are you alright?"

 He let out an exasperated noise.

"Yeah. Just nervous." 

 

"That's normal. I was nervous on my first assignment, too. I have to say, you've been set up for what could be quite a big task. They don't normally assign new recruits to missions with as many unknowns as these."

 A-65 was not sure whether to be proud or concerned. Gemini and Caprica had reassured them that he had been doing well, but well enough to engage a mission with fellows such as these? He felt comforted by their presence, experienced and armoured, though did not wish to get in the way. Ace, head still resting against the back of her chair, glanced down to A-65:

"Gem's right, you know. She said you'd been doing well." She leaned forward. "For to have this, though? I gotta say. That only lends itself to you bearing a vested interest."

"Veritas is interested in me?"

 She clocked her head from side to side in a neutral manner.

"Veritas." She repeated, "And perhaps some others, too."

The key sat like a lead weight in A-65's pocket and sent his mind racing, thoughts trailing aimlessly as they lay, neutered then reborn, in a trail of connections and mirrors. He grew distracted, conversed, looked outside the window and marvelled at the helicopter. Hours passed.

MARCH 15 2021 

Wilfryd hobbled as Arkady refilled the dark car, walking around the grimy underside of the petrol station and into its adjoining newsagents. People payed for their fuel there, and he lingered in looking at the mild selection at confectionary. He grumbled something and plucked a bag of hard candy from the shelf, irked that they did not bear the brand of caramel he was fond of. He drew glances as he walked, limping with a cane, to the stand at the far end of the room. He payed – including the fuel Arkady had pumped into the car into the transaction – and swiftly left, shoveling the sweets into his suit pocket as he did so. It was still cold, here, snow still clinging to the verges of roads and frost sitting in the air as he exhaled shaking breaths. A humming in his pocket; his phone was buzzing.

 "Hello?" His voice was a mutter, accent showing, as he walked up to the store again and leaned against the wall. The person on the other end was speaking quickly, voice a sing-song tone, and he winced with his one eye. "What? Did you make it there alright?"

Floss – the woman on the other end of the phone – was among the strangest people that Wilfryd knew through his work. She was pale, skin and hair a platinum white, and dressed in a blank gothic style. Her cheeks, when blushed a rose colour, where the most striking part of her palette. The most striking part of her form, though, was that of her eyes, or lack thereof. For where her eye-sockets sat in her skull protruded great horns that curled around her head like the coils of a ram. She did not wear them out in public, and Wilfryd had never seen her swap her horns or eyes. She could see with the horns, speckled with tiny blips of receptive sensors like the outer rim of a scallop.

"We made it here fine! It just took some reassurance to get the girl out of the van. She's awfully clingy."

Wilfryd frowned.

"Of course she is. She's taken to Verity. Keep them close."

"We are. The change in scenery seems to be doing her some good and she knows that we're trying to help her. There are just... there are just some barriers, there, Wilfryd. She's reclusive and quick to swing that icepick she lugs around."

"And your horns? What does she think of them?"

Arkady looked from the car and felt the gasping urge to smoke. He thought better of it, standing under the hood of a petrol station, and started up the car's grunting engine. Wilfryd was talking on the phone, leaning against his cane, and hopped in beside the driver as the hearse pulled around beside him. Wilfryd said a brief good-bye into the phone as the call ended and placed the device in his pocket.

"Floss called."

"Mhmm."

"There have been some complications, it seems. The Old Man's gained a vested interest in the girl; it seems she's the product of whatever was going on in that blasted camp. He wants a monitor. More observance of the situation." 

"I thought we had that enough of that." Arkady grumbled, Wilfryd shaking his head as he rummaged in the glovebox. He reached in and pulled something out from within; a silver disc. The thing was tiny, no bigger than his thumb, pear-shaped and tapered at both ends. Blood speckled the underside of it half-dried and crusting, rubbing off onto his hands as Arkady glanced over. Wilfryd put the small chip back into the glovebox as they drove, Arkady not having caught on. Silence for a moment, before Wilfryd saw his eye widen.

"Paralysis chip." He muttered. "They were using it to keep them still."

Wilfryd hummed in agreement, face stony as he pinched the brow of his nose. Another exasperated sigh left him, the roads either side of the two men quiet. It gave them time to think.

"You're in contact with management, aren't you?"

 Arkady shook his head.

"Only when they need me to repair their buggered fusion reactor. They scarcely tell me what the issue is even then, and I've been with them – well – since the 70's."

 "Well I'm being squirrelled away to Cohesion soon, and Verity's on thin ice with management as is."

He glanced up to the rearview mirror. The purple coffin creaked.  

 

 

JULY 23 2021 

The helicopter seemed able to land as quickly as it had taken off, rotors changing from spinning to still in but a second, all energy leaving the machine as it sat atop the snow. The legs were pointed and outstretched, triangular body bent in a manner that almost assumed a hunched posture, rotors dangling like dreadlocks.

"How was the trip?" 

Scalar. His voice was not mechanical in A-65's ears, a transmission that seemed as if he were standing right beside the man. Gemini had slipped in black earbuds in the journey that were surely broadcasting similar audio, the Epsilon women's suits bearing internal speakers. A-65 did not need such devices: his ears were entirely mechanical. 

"7-Roe and 7-Eve. Remain in the Cranefly. Activate the long-range scanners and broadcast observational data to 7-Ray and 7-Ace. A-65 and Agent Gemini; 7-Ace is your team leader. Defer to her." 

Ray turned to A-65 and Gemini, the two having stepped off the magnetic ramp and down to the snowy tundra below. The helicopter – the Cranefly – stood like a black fragment in the surrounding region, a rolling hillside of white snow that rose above a great ring of tall evergreen trees, their canopy of green pines forming a rolling carpet of verdancy that spread over the horizon. Split only by the peaking spires of mountains tipped in the white snow that speckled the green, the landscape was a pointillist painting of winter, the black rocks almost incandescent among the cold and stark colours. The Cranfly blended in with them, exposed yet hidden. Ace stepped out, Eve standing within the hull and pulling up the magnetic ramp. Rayleigh carried her crate, handle at the top like an engineer's toolbox. Gemini seemed cold, unsurprisingly, breath frosting in the air. A-65 heard the metal of her gauntlets clatter together as she shook, the convulsions slowing and steadying as she drew shaking breaths. Her hand drifted to the firearm at her side and she checked the handle, moving the holster and loosening the gun. A-65 did the same, if only to mimic her experience.

"The marker is Eastward." Scalar said. Ace nodded and began walking, the others following in tow behind her. The snow trudged underfoot, the sun high in the sky and shining with a whiteness that made it hard to distinguish sky from snow. The sun itself looked like a blister in that whiteness, sky and snow only separating as they hiked down the hill. The treeline formed a barrier of sorts, trunks and pines pushing up and into the whiteness of the sky. A diversion that seemed to part the two bodies of light, a darkness that creeped up in wide fingers of black. A-65 winced. It was bright, incredibly so. Every other colour seemed almost to punch out from beneath the white, the cyan and yellow and black scarce imperfections in the flawless veneer that crunched and squelched underfoot. The marker was a ways away

"We're not seeing anything."

 Ace's mechanised voice broadcasted twice. Once through the speaker of the suit and once through the earpiece. It blurred strangely in A-65's mind, one a fraction of a second behind the other. Indecipherably distanced yet layering in a jumbled fashion, another minute distraction that merged with his stinging eyes and feverish chest to form a strange cacophony of mild annoyance. Annoyance aside, Ace was right. There was nothing in this taiga aside from the trees and snow, blending into a single whole in an almost mirage-like connection. Gemini leered around their surroundings, turning on the heels of her boots and scanning the region. It was totally bare.

"The marker is still way's away. You should be approaching it soon – we're getting slower updates on your own transponders, though." "From the distance?"

"We're not sure. Agent Caprica is assisting with the navigation. There's a delay; that's all we know." 

Gemini raised a hand to her earpiece and depressed a small button in its side.

 "The trees?" She said simply, A-65 looking up to the forest above them, looming shapes overhead.

"It's a doubtful possibility." Scalar replied, "The transponders are Bowline-operated. Trees should provide little interference."

 "Bowline?" A-65 muttered.

"Instantaneous communication."

 Scalar's response was immediate. It seemed that, far from Gemini clicking the button on her implant, A-65's voice was always heard. He did not know how to feel about that.

Coiling beneath the bulk of incredible weight, a mechanical sigh rasped from between metal plates as a great finger of steel and rubber unwound, stretched and flexed as the shape it clung on to descended from the ceiling of the atrium. It was a dark place, the few lights that illuminated it being that of a ring-like fixture that verged the perimeter of the foundation and floor. The floor was a disc, large and flat, that stood central in the spherical atrium. It did not fit perfectly. There was a space beyond its edge where the light flowed under from, a gap beyond that leading down to a pit of absolute darkness. Valium felt tiny standing there, the great scarab silhouette of the mechanical nightmare above him descending upon her umbilical. There was a quiver in his breathing. It transferred through the modulator, such was his gasping. A wheeze, a death-rattle that shuddered from his lungs. His mask, neutral as ever, stared upwards. The sphere was massive, metal plates folded and smooth and dark, and yet she – Adelaide – filled it up completely. In silhouette she was arachnid, legs black spikes that protruded like caltrops from her body, itself a silver-white pill that shone in the dimming light. The umbilical connected to her back, round and cylindrical, a tapping hand sticking with sickle-like fingers at the cusp of one metal limb. She was a spider, hanging from her web, yet her face leered down towards the man before her. It was perhaps the most unnerving aspect of her monstrous form: at the edge of thorax, where the head would lay, was a flat pane. A panel of white metal similar in shape to the mask that Valium wore, his expressionless face mirrored in the porcelain visage of a young woman. Her eyes glowed blue down towards him, a smile creeping upon metal that flexed like muscle. 

"It's you?" Adelaide leered down towards the man, legs tucked beneath her body. Her voice was shrill, mechanical, yet mechanised in a way different to the anonymous modulator. Hers was one flat and garishly neutral, a voice that yearned to bear a human quality yet that remained completely castrated of femininity, emotion or pitch. It sounded like one of the mechanical voices used by an old computer, made unnerving and horrible through the addition of a soul.

"You're not supposed to be here." Adelaide chimed. Valium flinched somewhat, glared behind him, and looked back up to the monster. "You know, if they found out about this, you would be sent to me under... less favourable conditions. I don't think either of us want that."

 "I just want to know." His voice shook. "What... what did you mean? When you said I "wasn't the first"?"

Her smile widened. Him coming here – it had been an accident the first time. Not so much now.

"Elohim goes through his assistants quick. I can see more than you think, from up here. Most of them were dangerous, incompetent or both. I saw most of them, in the end, though none wished to see me. You – and one other – are the only ones I have not seen in such a way."

"Were... were they the first?"

"She was. She shook. She jittered. She could not sleep. In the end, she gained a... vested interest. She was taken from this place and left my sight."

Valium stooped. Adelaide gave him little comfort in his worries, his initial perplexation having blossomed into an all-out obsession and now a grave fear. The spider turned her head, eyes unblinking.

"What was her name?"

"Fiona Pullip. At the time she was known as Agent Axis."

Valium swore as he exited the metal sphere, slinking up the forgotten stairwell and out through the warehouse he knew he was not supposed to be in. Last time had been an accident, and he had been reprimanded for it: demoted and shamed. Now, though, he was knowingly breaking the rules. He trusted that Adelaide would erase the proof of his arrival there, scrub the cameras with her AI mind and remove his form from the frames. He had not choice but to trust her and trust her; he did. He walked through the empty warehouse, large cylinders either side of him. He had no idea what they were used for, but they did not look pretty. They were clean enough, glass grey and wrought with scratches and imperfections, though what lay inside them was a mass of twisted metal as nightmarish and unsightly as the form of Adelaide – human and slender, almost proportional but just off, with hands that looked like sickles and a smooth, crescent head. He shuddered, the chill that coursed down his spine sending a deep jolt through his already prominent jitters. The things sat in the room discarded, their cylindrical caskets abandoned by their creators. As if in stasis, they slept, the cobalt fluid they floated within infighting a mechanical fugue that embalmed their artificial joints. He noted that there were many of the caskets, aligned on rotating tube-shaped shelves, stacked like pills in a caseless bottle, thrown in long rows amidst shelves stacked with crates and boxes. He shuddered. Each tube had maybe a dozen fugue caskets balancing on their platforms, each one containing the prone body of one of the infernal machines, like a skeleton devoid of skin floating in a uterus of metal. He darted through the passageway he had found, the accidental point of entry that separated this forbidden warehouse from the dozens of others open to inhabitance. He did not like that, beside the sleek metal door, lay caskets empty of metal and drained of their amniotic balm.

Ecstasy stood down the hallway, leaning against the wall as Valium exited the warehouse chamber. The corridor was otherwise empty, the deep location of the corridor granting it a cold, dark atmosphere. Valium leered towards the man, stunted for a moment, and continued walking. He knew he was not meant to be here.

"What are you doing here?" Valium asked, voice warbled by a twang of worry. Ecstasy, with his shark tooth grin, turned to the man.

"Waiting for you. I didn't want you getting in trouble."

 "How did you know I was here?"

Ecstasy leaned forward off the wall, placing his hand upon Valium's back as the shaking man approached him. The shaking had not waned since the swapping of their job roles, magenta sash hanging from Ecstasy's torso, and the lack of such a physical change in Valium illicit a worrying sensation within him. He frowned beneath his mask.

"I knew this is where you would be."

 "How?"

Ecstasy tapped the metal temple of his mask, an expression that did little but confuse Valium as the pink-haired man walked ahead down the hallway. 

 

"You're not meant to be here." Valium reiterated, breaking into a light jog to catch up with the man. Ecstasy turned to him.

"I know what's down there, you know."

Valium remained silent. His mind shot through thoughts yet nothing stuck. He had not known about Adelaide until his prior accidental entry, and no record of the AI could be found anywhere across site. All he knew about her was a company designation: "Section 12". He asked Ecstasy to elaborate. He did not, though remained at Valium's side. They continued walking, up through the stairs and entered the large company cafeteria. There were more people here – other workers on their break or socialising with their fellows. A lot of people stood here, relatively speaking. A few dozen who knew Valium and perhaps liked him. Even so he felt solitary. Ecstasy turned to him.

  

 "You can relax, Valium. It's ok – I promise."

"Relax?" Valium scoffed. "I can't."

 The Bowline was malfunctioning, and that, to Rayleigh, was an oddity of bizarre proportion. She had never known a Bowline to falter, never known one to broadcast too much or too little, and had seldom heard of one broadcasting with a delay. She was unsure of how they worked yet knew that even that method of thinking was not entirely accurate. It was not a broadcast, no. It was not a transmission. Technically speaking, there was no transmission being made – it simply cut down the space between the communicating parties to zero, made it so that one speaking miles away was heard in the ear of the listener. It formed a knot between two people, made them hear one another continuously. There was no transmission. What was being said only passed through the Bowline, the sentences and words and sounds heard given the wonderful term of "Bowline Splat". A crude – though technically true – name for a technically astonishing machine. She swooped to look at her surroundings and felt a weary sensation nestle itself in her gut.

"Requesting permission to deploy Hardpoints?"

 "Reason?"

Ace's voice came through instantly. Perhaps the lag was only occurring over the wider distance between them and Mt. Asgard. 

"The situation is unfamiliar. The Bowline malfunction could impart communication delays in receiving potential hazards. How far out are we from the shipment?" 

"Permission granted, 7-Ray."

 "Two hundred meters ahead."

Scalar's voice came through. The lag was now measured at over a second in length. A bizarre oddity. They were approaching the site of the shipment, and the nature of the blankness of the area became evident: what seemed to be a basin loomed in the ground, a crater of sorts that split beneath sheer rock. It was disc shaped and massive, a perfect circle verged by sheer walls of black rock. The white snow was slushy and thin beneath amber lamps that shone, ground clear of trees or foliage. There were structures embedded into the snow, most concrete and simple in form: a flat-topped, squat warehouse. A tower like a brick standing on its side. Their functions seemed obvious, yet others were completely unknown. One stood like a tumour of cubic concrete, a tilting mass of overlapping faces and vertices, another standing like an askew rhombus streaked with vertical gashes down its side.

 "What the hell?" Ace muttered. She stood away from the rest, on the edge of the cliff-face looking down into the massive flat basin. "Epsilon – Scalar, are you seeing this?"

A second.

 "Affirmative. Continue around perimeter, set scout points at ten meters out and-"

A whistling sound. Low and droning, a puff of smoke on the horizon. A65 flinched as a swathe of heat hit his face, traversing the metal of the mask and seeping in through the grid across his eyes. He winced. The ground Ace was standing upon buckled and cracked, the cracks traversing up towards the three others as snow crumbled and shifted downwards. Ace brought her hands to her head protectively, the debris and dust covering her form entirely as A-65 watched her slip from the cliff and tumble down to the basin below. The dust settled and a distance set in between A-65 and the events surrounding him: sounds droned out as if he had changed his cochlear implants. Gemini surged into his side and threw him to the ground as a tree exploded into splinters behind him, another fireball shooting over the two of them as Gemini's body flinched above him. A shadow over the light – Ray stood behind them, cyan armour blocking out the fire as she yelled at them to run.

Ray shouted commands over the Bowline as she ducked, rolling in the armour with surprising dexterity as another explosive payload whistled behind her, another tree splintering and shattering as heat loomed over her back. She stood, exoskeletal joints whirring to attention, and started running forward. One hand still clutched the toolbox at her side, and – as she hunkered down in position – she pulled the top compartment open. It slid on a single joint, the top removed in a single swift flick, the sides folding down to reveal what lay within. It was a shotgun-looking weapon folded at four points with a barrel the size of her hand and a hose coiled from the back. She reached in and glanced over to the basin. The only of the four structures that peaked over the cliff horizon was that of the tower – a clear shot. Ray pulled the Chain-Launcher from the box and snapped the quarters into place, valves sealing and locks fastening as she did so, another rocket exploding at her feet. The blast threw her back, assembled Chain-Launcher almost flying from her hands as she careened backwards through the air, spinning on her side. Her metal form cleanly severed the trunk of a tree, which creaked and toppled abruptly, axis lurching forward as the trunk bent down. She rolled over snow, momentum still continuing until she slammed into another stalwart trunk. The tree did not sever, though the wood buckled at her weight and splintered. It folded around her like the world's worst mattress; she grunted and stood. That she had expected, yet even so, whatever missiles were being fired were not of a modest payload. She scrambled to her feet and stood, the ground before her exploding as a flash struck the ground and rock splintered with a deafening crash. She ran. The hose on the Chain-Launcher flailed like an animal's dangling tail as she ran, one hand holding the middle section of the rubber flail as the other clutched the weapon. She looked to the tower. Another crash behind her, yet no flash or smoke from the concrete beam. The ground erupted; she reached to her back and jammed the steel end of the hose into a vertebral socket. Instantly, new information displayed itself across her visor:

CAI-LAN ROCKET:: OX. PRESSURE --- 12% --- NOMINAL TANK CAPACITY: 60%

She swore at having not capped the end of the hose with her thumb. The blast must have knocked pressure from the air tank of the machine, which now lay far below the norm required for its optimal use. She ran, air sucking in through the vents in her suit. The air intake was faster than that she would gain through standing still, her own respiration contributing to the tank filled as the hose drew from air ambient in the atmosphere, that surging against her armour as she ran adding greatly to the tank's fill. Obviously, the quickest way to fill the tank would be to fall into the basin, air swooping up rapidly, yet to do so would be sure suicide. Rayleigh swore again: to her left, just visible through the trees, ran Gemini and A- 65. They could not survive a blast like that. What were they to do? Run into the woodlands, unheard and unseen? She did not know the range of this weapon that was targeting her, and wondered whether or not their own safety would be guaranteed through distance.

 OX. PRESSURE --- 15%

Rayleigh grunted and lowered the power of the exoskeleton's movement assistance. Immediately the machine felt heavier. Cracks in the metal had formed form the blast as well as dents that were seeping hydraulic fluid. She could patch such ruptures with a brief pause, though did not wish to risk another blast – let alone a direct hit. It would be dire trouble if she could not move in the suit, and so lowered the output to quench its mechanical bleeding. She had time before the tank filled, yet had the patience to wait. More trees exploded behind her.

A-65 and Gemini were darting ahead, the coldness of the taiga having long since left the woman's body. She was leaping over felled trunks, running – even glancing back to make sure that A-65 was in tow. It was a surprising show of endurance and dexterity, A-65's mind jumbled by a concoction of adrenaline and fear. Ahead was a dip of sorts, a valley that lead into the basin. It would be simple to descend yet difficult to climb – Gemini looked to the side to see where it lead and swore. Another cliff face, a great jutting heap of rock, protruded like a wall down the path. Like the walls of the basin it was sheer and vertical, almost artificial in nature, and served to be a barrier dividing one half of the taiga from another. Her vision darted across the surrounding area as a tree splintered far behind them, a great and groaning creak splitting through the wind as the trunk toppled and smashed to the ground. Gemini could see the blue and-yellow hazard tape pattern of Rayleigh's suit, and looked towards A-65. They skidded down the hillside clumsily yet with focus, and Gemini rolled as she hit the ground. She drew her pistol from her side, aiming it down towards the four buildings that lay ahead in the basin. They were far away yet were monolithic in the curtains of snow either side of them. A focus was upon her face. No humans seemed to be in the complex, no foot soldiers or guards or security to speak of, the lights and concrete giving the impression of a village forgotten. A-65 drew his firearm too, though did not hold it with her confidence or focus. He looked to the concrete. There was a sound like a firework being set off, a ring of smoke puffing forward from the ground between the rhombus and tower as a dark fleck shot into the sky. He trailed it with his eyes.

Mortar. 

 

The missile arced slowly, flickering light giving out as it fell to the ground – behind him and Gemini. The two of them watched as it curved and fell to the stone wall behind them. They locked eyes: Gemini's face bore genuine fear. The missile exploded atop the stone, fragments splitting themselves in every direction as the snow either side of them shifted and slid. They ran ahead, towards the basin, yet the rumbling and shaking took Gemini off her feet. She stumbled to the ground, gauntlets sinking into the snow, and A-65 darted back to help her up. She yelled something to him yet he did not hear, the grinding and sliding of the snow a drowning noise that swamped everything else. He grabbed her by the arms and lifted her to her feet, the two of them falling together as the snow smothered them both.

OX. PRESSURE --- 33% 

Rayleigh had seen Gemini and A-65 skid down the valley and had seen the missile erupt upon the stone wall behind them, and had heard the deafening roar as the snow had slid down from the valley. She could only hope that they had been able to run into the basin. She queried them on the Bowline yet got no response, biting her lip in her suit as the silence rang in her helmet.

"7-Ace?"

 She heard a groan, long and drawn out, and breathed a sigh of relief as she heard Ace's boyish voice:

"Stuck under rubble – multiple suit ruptures but still strong. Give me a minute."

"7-Eve? 7-Roe?"

 A split-second delay. It was Eve who spoke:

"We hear you – what's going on?"

 "Change observational scanners to heat-based. Filter out anything small or fast-moving and send the input to my visor."

A brief silence, then a new display. It sat in the bottom-right corner of Ray's vision, translucent like onion skin, a green square that showed a large swathe of the taiga around them. Tiny lime blips showed themselves – Ray and Ace sat away from a handful of spots in the basin There was distance between them. She looked to the collapsed valley; from where she stood to the valley there were no dots. The snow had buried any heat their bodies exuded, it seemed. Elsewise, the taiga was a mosaic of changing heat patterns. A large spot in the basin lit up and flared towards Ray before darting out; she looked up to see a black cylinder falling from the sky. It erupted upon the ground beside her and flung her forward, more dents and cracks revealing themselves as she hugged the Chain Launcher close to her torso and tucked her legs in like a cannonball, flying through the air before thudding sharply against the ground. She grunted, air swooping against her. 

OX. PRESSURE --- 47% 

"People approaching, Ace." Her voice was punctuated by gasps. "Status?" She rolled and ran, drawing close to the perimeter of the cliff as the concrete structures loomed before her. She could see the rubble where Ace had plunged into the basin: a large chunk of black stone shifting and crumbling as boulders rolled from its underside. Ace was struggling, it seemed. The green blips on Ray's sensor revealed themselves, now. She could see them as a trio of people walking towards the rubble, weapons in hand. They were long and slender – hunting rifles? Their armour seemed impossible to discern though seemed innately bulky in form. Either they were suicidal or prepared; there was little wiggle-room when dealing with an armoured Epsilon. She knew they must veer towards the former. 

Ace grunted.

"Give me a minute."

 Ray leapt, air swooshing around her as she fell to the snow beneath. She bent her knees and landed heavily upon upon the ground, dropping from a half-ruined wall of black stone. She stood upon the packed snow of the valley that had swallowed A-65 and Gemini. A pang of guilt raised in her chest. Suppressing the emotion, she raised the cylindrical barrel of the Chain Launcher to sight and watched as a black dot shot into the sky before her.

OX. PRESSURE --- 56% 

Ray got to one knee and whispered the commands that would lock the servos and joints of the exoskeleton. There was a moment of silence: the missile crashed down onto the snow behind her and she fired down to the ground.

The Chain-Launcher itself was a weapon of exponential ammunition, launching a superheated glob of air that ignited like a fireball upon the rupture of its shell of ionised helium. The pressure wave from the explosion behind Rayleigh surged forward, snow overtaking her body in a thick mist as the Chain-Launcher fired its ionised payload. The bubble hit the ground and there was a sound like an electric spark, the bubble's great pop causing a wave of pressure to surge back and hit Rayleigh's front as the explosion behind her surged. The forces were equalized; she remained where she was standing. As the chain reaction flourished, fire bloomed around Rayleigh's silhouette: water dripped to the snow beneath her and the snow melted at her feet. She looked forward. From an aerial point of view, the valley would still be covered in snow mist: the Chain-Launcher's fire had created a window that she could see through, heat staving off the formation of snow mist and pressure opening up a wisping corridor of steam, if just for a moment. It remained open for enough time to make one shot, yet that was all that Rayleigh needed: she looked down towards the rubble where Ace lay buried, aimed and fired.

Gemini cowered beneath the snow, flinching and freezing and breathing cold. She opened her eyes, lungs gasping and spluttering, something hot looming over her. 

"Crawl – quickly!"

 A-65 hung over her like a spider, the rubber of his suit searing hot and steaming. He spluttered. The snow was melting, dripping around her in the small and dark cave they found themselves in, a tiny air pocket carved into something else. She could only see because A-65's mask was glowing. The silver of the metal had been seared a deep red; it steamed and smoked and looked as if it were going to melt, metal stressing and warping and bathing the small igloo they sat within in deep, crimson light. She looked ahead. She had no clue which way to crawl. She picked one randomly, and started shovelling snow. It was perhaps a benefit of the gauntlets that she couldn't feel the cold, yet her breath shook wearily. A-65 crawled up behind her, scrambling as the snow collapsed and dripped form around his glowing form. She could hear his teeth chattering: whether from cold or pain she could not tell. He surged and shoved his hands into the snow, yelling out a modulated roar as the snow began to sizzle and melt. He pushed his mask within, the light dying out then revived as the frost visibly melted and liquified around him. Gemini could feel heat from his body, gloves scorched yet damp, and followed him through the foxhole of packed snow left in his wake.

The boulders exploded into fire, the pressure wave hitting in every direction. Some of the heavier boulders flew up in a manner that made them seem deceptively light, crashing down to the snow with a force that reduces them to fragments and churned up the frost like a geyser. Ace lumbered from the rubble, boulders having taken the brunt of the blast. She let out a growl-like exhalation, looking up to the three men before her. They bore hunting rifles and flak jackets, yet only one remained. One lay crushed by a boulder, little more than their boots showing, and another seemed to have gotten too close to the boulders at they had exploded, now motionless and speckled with impaling debris. The one that remained slinked backwards away from Ace as she lumbered forward: the exoskeleton had been charred, dented, scratched and torn yet remained largely intact. They raised the hunting rifle and fired. Ace felt the bullet tear through the metal of the suit, gouging her side as she stumbled backwards. The man bore a crazed expression, something that sadistic and influenced through drugs or mania, and ran. She snarled, pushed the pain of her wound behind her, and pursued. The last of the rubble shaken from her form, she bounded across the snow-turned-slush of the basin, having lowered the exoskeleton's assistance during her attempt to scramble out from under the rubble. The amber light glittered down upon the snow turning it an orangish colour in the darkened overcast sky, sun having withdrew behind the clouds. Ace saw the great heap of smoke and steam that Rayleigh squatted within at the horizon, the vague silhouette of the woman showing her aim pointed towards Ace and the man. He continued running; she diverted to a side and watched as the snow parted around him. A second Chain-Launcher bubble erupted around him, then, the electric pop mixing with the roar of fire as he flew from his feet backwards, flak jacket and trouser leg aflame. He scrambled, rolled, and shot again at Ace. The bullet pierced her shoulder as she lowered her fist down to the man, him rolling to his side as she came down upon the earth, fist cracking the concrete foundations beneath the snow. A flat plane. She looked to him and wrenched her fist from the rock, panting heavily, as he scrambled to his feet and raised the gun again, shooting as she lurched forward in an attempt to grab him. The bullet shot through her gut: she let out a pained scream. The man's grin exacerbated as he stood back, walking backwards in a manner more agile than the woman in the hulking suit before him. He glanced up to the ledge that Rayleigh sat upon and snarled. 

"Fucking hell, shoot the valley again!" he yelled to his left – towards the tower – as something behind Ace erupted up into flame. She flinched and turned: another missile shooting from the ground. The man kept his eyes upon her and shot, the bullet ricocheting off a protruding angled plate in a shower of sparks. She leered back and lunged. The two began a dance – Ace would lunge and the man would dart back, moving in circles as the valley erupted into flame behind them. Ace glanced up and saw the form of Rayleigh fall from the ledge, landing heavily. She growled. The man hopped back, legs still limber even as they lay charred, trousers torn by shrapnel and burnt with heat. He glanced over the stone and raised the gun again.

Another pop – though not from the black rifle the man carried. He jolted sideways and looked to his left, blinking confused. Ace pushed her armoured hand through the man's head. The man's head ceased to exist. Gemini lumbered towards Ace, shaking, melted water across her body and the firearm she bore in her hand. A-65 was behind her, pistol drawn to the small protrusion that the missiles came from.

"Withdraw." Was all Rayleigh said as the snow melted around the protrusion, slush melting to reveal a black cylinder concealed; there was a whoosh and fire consumed it, the metal melting in heat and warping greatly. The three saw this and – far from it though they were – lumbered and ran towards the confinement of the nearest structure: a squat, square warehouse of concrete held up by large support pillars. They ducked within and the cylinder exploded dramatically, a great cacophony erupting as fire bellowed outwards. Gemini clamped her hands over her ears, the filter of A-65's cochlear implants transmitting little more than a faint, roaring whoosh.

A-65's mask had cooled, red-hot metal warping to a duller grey colour as imperfections showed themselves in its surface. He panted, still feeling physically hot, and Gemini leaned from a pillar to see Rayleigh approaching. She did so cautiously, waving a hand signal to Ace that the woman understood.

"There are others." She said, A-65 looking out towards the other concrete bunkers. Doorways were present and silhouettes leaned from them, the concrete he stood behind exploding into a shower of fragments. He cowered, flinching, and pulled up behind Gemini so that the two stood back-to-back. She closed her eyes briefly, still shaking, and leaned outwards to make a shot. There was a clean line of sight between her and the assailants: one stuttered back, another fell. She yelled for A-65 to get behind Ace; he did so, the woman shielding his body with her wounded suit. A-65 could see the exit points where slender bullets had pierced through her and his heart – racing as it was – seemed to quicken alarmingly. He felt the feverish intensity rise once more, and clutched the gun in his hands. Behind her armoured hip he could see the swarm of jacketed gunmen firing down upon them, the pop of their firearms sending fragments of stone around them. There was a bang: the doorway grew engulfed in flame. He flinched. 

Flames engulfing the puffy jackets – flak vests! They fell as the roar exploded outwards, rubble atop flesh, flame atop skin -

He scrambled over the floor, hands and knees pressed against the concrete, and sat with his back against the crate. His hands shook. "I need something, Rayleigh!"

 Ace shouting – she was behind the tattered concrete pillar. It looked as if it were going to give way, large chunks of the rock having been cleaved form its midsection where the woman hung over Gemini. Ray reached down on her side. There was a sound like a vacuum cleaner as something sucked in air, the woman hauling a small firearm from her equipment belt and throwing it against the ground. Her focus was spit for a moment: she jolted as a bullet cut through the armour, letting out a mechanised grunt. Ace fired to the doorway and moved towards the crate where A-65 hid, Gemini crouched behind her and shadowing the armoured woman. She ran towards the crate, hunkering down beside A-65.

"Are you hurt?" She asked, her vision focused ahead. She looked to A-65.

"No."

 Another roar of fire; he flinched. 

 "Any more of them?"

It was Ace. She sounded deeply pained, voice all wheezes and gasps.

"In the building – not showing themselves, now."

 !! REPEATED EXHALATION !! --- OX. PRESSURE --- 45% --- NOMINAL TANK CAPACITY: 60%

Rayleigh swore, again, and ducked behind the pillar closest to her. Ace hung by the ruined one, Ray the one before that, as the bloodied doorway of the building stood diagonal from them. It was all chokepoints, now – the openness of the clash had ended.

 There was a mechanical garble in A-65's ear: the Bowline communication from Scalar had deteriorated entirely. He locked eyes with Gemini and the two crawled ahead, passing another crate and getting into a more secured position.

"We need to get out of here." Ace grumbled. She looked ahead and saw the valley, all snow and ice, slumped down to the ground. "How many are there, Ray?"

Ray looked to her heat radar. Naturally, the doorways to the bunker and tower were swamped in heat, the fire having ignited the gunmen from within and still roaring at their entrances. There were others, there, heat signatures visible as blips in her radar. There were Ace and Gemini and A65. Another stood behind them, yet there was silence, and – as Ray turned – nothing was there. A small fire, perhaps? Something decaying in one of the crates? Whatever it was, it wasn't moving. She barked a command to Gemini and A-65, alerting them of the anomaly, and the two looked over to the site. Nothing seemed to be there – someone hiding in wait?

 "What do we do?" A-65 muttered. Gemini turned to him and readied her gun. Her nerves had steadied, it seemed, and Ace stood to give them cover. She shuffled forward. A-65 followed apprehensively. "If it is an ambush then they're in a bad place."

Ahead lay a parting in the crates. Gemini slipped through it, still crouching. A-65 followed. Apprehension mixed with the adrenaline of the situation to create an unusual balm in his blood. He trusted Gemini and trusted Ray and Ace, though did not have much of choice in doing so. Heat exuded from his skin, his breath feeling as if wrought with cinders. It hurt like a burn, though through his crackling exhalations there was focus and drive. He followed Gemini and looked around. The bizarre nature of this place settled in his mind. What was this? A warehouse? There were crates lining the floor and he, Gemini ahead of him, creaked one of the lids open. The inside was filled with flak jackets. He looked up: there was silence from the bunkers, Ace and Ray scouting and investigating whilst keeping ground around the warehouse. He looked back in, and opened another. Hunting supplies – bullets. Long and slender. No firearms, though. He looked back. The warehouse was divided by the pillars and the crates, yet amidst them lay squat, steel tables of a sort. It all seemed very... recreational? The thought seemed confusing yet stuck in his mind. The missile platform had been grafted onto the ground. Everything else was already here – warehouse and watchtower and residence, perhaps? He looked over to the rhombus structure. He could see it somewhat clearly through the open walls of the warehouse; through the glass of the vertical slats that ran down its side it seemed totally empty, though he recognised a long diversion that split like a wall from end to end within. It was a similar shape to the training rack that he and Gemini had used in Veritas. A shooting ground? Gemini skulked ahead; he continued his investigation and creaked open another crate. MRE rations. Bottles of water. He frowned. A-65 lowered the lid to the crate, metal joints creaking in a shrill groan. As if in response to the shrill noise, there was a thumping on the ground beside him: he flinched and darted back. It came from within another crate, flat and thin and black. Not a crate – a coffin, the thumping coming from within. Thumping and noise, muted through the black leather and wood. Screaming noise, shrill and weak. He looked towards Gemini. She seemed not to have noticed, hunched ahead beside a crate as she looked over to Ace and Ray: A-65 looked to the coffin. 

There was a keyhole at its side.

He patted his trousers down. The key from the envelope – he had it, and took it out into his hand. There was a thought about the coincidence this was, though the thought vanished as the key clicked into place. He twisted; a mechanism stirred underneath and the lid of the coffin burst on its hinges

There was a sound alike gasping for air: Gemini turned to look at A-65, rushing over when she saw a young woman hunched in the coffin he stood beside. She was thin, gaunt, wild-eyed. Pale skin and black hair, looking to A-65 with an expression of neutered, worn fear. Her breath frosted in the air.

"Oh my god." Gemini crawled beside her and A-65, holstering her pistol and calling over Ray and Ace. It seemed their scouting was done; anyone that remained, if indeed they did, clearly did not want to involve themselves in another firefight.

"Do you speak English?" Gemini asked. The woman shakily nodded.

"What's your name?"

 A-65 already knew the answer to that question, and held his surprise

when she told them her name was Fiona. Ace and Ray loomed above them

– both wounded and bleeding and with suits torn. It seemed a good time

to leave.