Syberian Sunrise (16 page)

Stern began to scream.

His eyes shot open and his body twitched...but didn't move. He was still down for the count as well. Enzo struggled against the confines of his body as he watched Stern's insides being drained away, slowly filling the belly of the Harvester that was killing him. He felt his artificial limb twitch...but it wasn't enough, not yet.

He didn't know how long he laid there watching Stern die, listening to him scream. He could have closed his eyes to the sight of it, but that seemed like it might somehow be disrespectful. The screams went on and on and on. Before long, there was less of Stern on the inside than the outside. Finally, something vital was taken or damaged and he stopped screaming. Enzo watched the light, the spark of intelligence or consciousness, fade from the man's eyes.

And he was just another corpse.

The Harvester seemed to sense this as well. It pulled its tube-tongue back inside and swung its hideous head to face Enzo.

Now it was his turn.

He could move his artificial limb and some of his body, but would it be enough?

The Harvester sauntered over to him, claws clacking on the tiles. It positioned its head over his stomach, opened its mouth and shot its tongue out. The pain was immediate and immense. Enzo let out a short scream, a bark of pain.

The time to act had come.

His fake arm shot up in a burst of strength, gripped the tube and tore it free. The Harvester immediately backed away, a high-pitched keening sound emitting from it as it retracted what was left of its tongue. Enzo ripped the thing from his body and tossed it aside, watching the Harvester flee from the room. One down, at least. The Mutant was coming for him though. Enzo quickly began shoving himself back with his feet, feeling for weapons. He had none. His pistol, gone. His knife, removed. He had
nothing
.

Just his arm.

Enzo lurched to his feet, his body feeling still somewhat numb, but pain shot through him as it came back online, like a foot fallen asleep now filled with pins and needles the flow of circulation was restored. He groaned, made a fist with his fake hand and punched as hard as he could. His fist sank into the chest of the Mutant, breaking through the ribcage. Opening his fingers, he grabbed and felt something wriggling around in his grasp. Realizing what he had, Enzo tore the Slug free of its host, which collapsed into a heap.

He squeezed, breaking the creature into two halves and tossed away the remains. As he absently wiped the entrails and gore off on his clothes, he looked around. He was alone. As he took a few steps, he staggered. Not good. Enzo realized that he was closed to passing out again. He moved over to the closest door and opened it up, looking for a more secure place to do just that: pass out and recharge away from prying eyes.

The door opened to a bloody infirmary. It was empty. He locked the door behind him, as well as the other primary entryway into the room, then retreated back to a smaller supply closet along the back. It was vaguely hidden, out of the way, a place to crash for a bit. He opened the door, looked around. There was a stack of crates near the back of the room. He moved towards them, around them, found a little niche in between the crates and the wall.

This would do.

His last thoughts as he collapsed to the ground, putting his back against the wall, was that this was becoming too commonplace.

Then the darkness took him.

* * * * *

Enzo didn't know how much time had passed when he finally woke back up, only that he was in a lot of pain, very hungry and thirsty as hell. He was still alive, still alone, so that was something at least. Standing, he groaned, popping his neck, back and shoulders. His right shoulder was still giving him hell, but with the topography of pain his whole body had become, it had been mercifully reduced to barely tolerable. He moved slowly, more out of pain than caution, and come out of the storage room to find the infirmary unchanged.

He hobbled over to the main door, gently massaging his shoulder, more out of habit than anything else, and checked that the lock he'd activated was still intact. It was, same with the other one. And the vents all looked good, too. Which meant that he had found a moment of relative peace, another eye in the storm. As he made for the shower stalls in the back corner of the room, Enzo couldn't help but notice that history was repeating itself. At least he was better off this time...sort of. He'd gotten a lot of shit done.

Enzo stripped down, turned up the water in the nearest stall to as high a temperature as he could stand it and stepped in. He kept the door open so that he could see out into the infirmary. At one point in his life, it might have made him nervous, even if there was no one around to see him, but he'd long ago gotten over any weird feelings of exposure people normally felt when naked. He showered off all the blood and sweat and dirt he'd accumulated over the past...however long he'd been down in this godforsaken hellhole.

When he'd gotten all he could out of the shower, Enzo stepped out and toweled off. He grabbed a full medical kit from a cabinet and spent ten minutes going over his body, cleansing and bandaging all the wounds, cuts, scrapes and burns he'd earned during the fighting. He finished the job by injecting himself with a universal anti-viral/anti-bacterial syringe that also acted as a painkiller, then dosing himself with a stimulant and finally, just for the hell of it, dosed his shoulder with half an injector of good old morphine.

His uniform was in crap shape. As it was, his luck held out and he located another one stashed away in the myriad of cabinets occupying the perimeter of the room. He dressed, pulled his boots and security vest into place, then considered his situation. He was still alive, but he wasn't very well off in the way of supplies and weapons. That thought really seemed to strike home. These things must have taken his gear, even his radio.

Were they that smart?

What had Eve said? That there was some giant monster controlling them all telepathically? The Alpha? He wondered where it was, if it'd be harder to kill than the Beta had been. Not that it mattered too much. He'd kill it or it would kill him...or maybe he'd find a ship and just take off before some kind of confrontation was forced.

Enzo felt about as good as he was going to and had likely gotten everything out of this infirmary that he could. He considered grabbing another scalpel, on top of the full medkit he'd clipped to his belt, but that thought seemed to surface another one. For some reason, he wanted to search Stern's body. Unsure of why, Enzo unlocked the side door and moved back into the bathroom, finding it still clear. He knelt at Stern's body.

A pat-down revealed what he realized his brain had remembered without directly telling him: Stern had a knife hidden on his body. Enzo realized he must've seen it at some point...and the Altered had apparently overlooked it.

“Thanks, Staff Sergeant,” Enzo muttered as he took it and the sheath for it. He attached it to his left hip and then began hunting through the bathroom for anything useful. The Altered were thorough, though not
that
thorough, apparently.

Five minutes later, he was rewarded. Someone had stashed a little cache of supplies. He recovered a fully loaded pistol and three magazines to spare. He pocketed the magazines and kept the pistol in his hands for the moment.

It was time to get back on track, figure out what had happened while he and Stern had been down here wasting time trying to rescue the dead. Enzo spent a moment trying to remember where a spare radio might be. The security center, there had been several of them on this level, provided he was still on Level Five. He walked over to the other door and poked his head out into the corridor beyond, looking around. It had to be, he surmised. This wasn't the grim, industrial center of the first three levels, nor the cavernous rock-walled holding area of Level Six, nor the large, circular corridor of the Level Four and the military sector.

He supposed it was possible that this was one of the levels above that, but that didn't really make sense. Why would they drag him so far up? That, combined with the absolutely wrecked look and feel of the place decided him. He was in Research, and he'd memorized at least some of the schematics. If he could find somewhere familiar, he could get to one of the security centers, grab a radio or get into the network, figure out what to do next, who was still alive up there. And maybe he could grab a few guns along the way.

Enzo set off.

* * * * *

He'd had to spend all but one of his magazines and bloodied his knife getting to the security center, but he'd gotten there. There were more Mutants patrolling the corridors now,
actually
patrolling them. On the lookout for other survivors. Harvesters sometimes accompanied them, and Enzo felt an eerie shiver as he connected them to hunting parties of old Earth antiquity. They didn't have guns though, not that they seemed to need them. He'd avoided as many of them as he could, sticking to back corridors and storerooms.

He'd also managed to avoid a pair of Ires and a Guardian protecting a nest. But he had run into enough of the other bastards to warrant a few fights. The security center he found was damaged and bloody, but operational. Locking the door behind him, Enzo crossed the room and began hunting through the lockers and racks occupying two of the walls. They were almost totally depleted, but he did manage to find a few magazines for his pistol and...

A radio. Finally.

Securing the magazines, he turned on the radio and sat down at a desk, staring up at a bank of mostly broken security monitors.

“Brooks? Lee? Anyone still out there? Beam? This is Enzo, and-”

A burst of static interrupted him. He felt a bit of hope in his heart. Despite his loner nature, his almost total inability to truly trust anyone, he didn't want to be alone in this nightmare anymore than he had to.

Then his hopes died.
“Ah, Mr. Rains, I was hoping to hear from you. I've been looking for someone to test my new...abilities against.”
It was the Director, Fielding.

Enzo frowned. “Abilities?”

“Yes. I've mastered control over the Altered within my own body. It's a very...liberating experience. We have your friends, and we're up in the abandoned mines. If you can make it up here through all that this facility has to offer...then I look forward to killing you.”

The connection was cut. Enzo felt a cold stone settle into his stomach. So Dietz's insane rants hadn't been so insane after all? Fielding had found some way to implant herself with a Slug and control it? He took a deep breath and let it out in a long sigh. This was getting better and better. Enzo looked down at the pistol in his hand.

If he was going to fight this war, he'd need bigger and better guns. The only place left that might have them was on the next level up.

Slowly, he stood, and began his ascension.

Chapter 13

–
Locked In
–

The Military Headquarters Level was a wreck.

It seemed as though Dark Ops had swept right on through, carving straight through the entire level. There were fresh corpses, mostly Altered, Mutants and Harvesters, and a few Guardians. Occasionally, he'd find a Dark Ops troop, someone who'd fallen in battle. Usually the corpse was picked clean, but every now and then he'd come across a spare magazine or leftover weapon. He was making his way first towards the armory where they'd scavenged the rocket launcher to kill the Beta. There was a good chance
something
was leftover there.

Enzo's thoughts were racing. There was still a part of him that wanted to just push on through to the other side, get to the surface, hot-wire a vehicle and burn sky until he was somewhere a lot more pleasant. Another part of him argued that the only way out was through, there was a more than decent chance that any method of escape would be covered by something mean and nasty. So why not just kill the Dark Ops troops and get it over with? Put a bullet in Fielding's head and move on? There was another part, though.

A part he didn't really like.

Something he thought he'd burned and buried long ago, back from his Spec Ops days. Some of him wanted to rescue the others. There was undoubtedly a thrill from being the hero, kicking in doors and rescuing the hostages, the victims, the helpless. But below that, more important, was the foundation of human civilization. The ability to help your fellow human for nothing more than the fact that it was the right thing to do.

There was an old, old saying that a good deed was its own reward. For the past half decade or so, Enzo had taken on the newer saying that no good deed goes unpunished, but he'd be lying to himself if he said he didn't believe that the original saying was still true. So, with a quiet sigh as he came close to the armory, he knew that he would gear up, make a plan and kick in a few doors to rescue Eve, Lee and Beam. Because it was the right thing to do.

Enzo frowned as he came to the armory. He still only had his pistol and combat knife, and it didn't look like he'd be getting much else. The room was large, stuffed full of foldout tables, crates, lockers, racks and shelves. They were all cleared out, propped opened and emptied. Despite this, Enzo knew he had to check, because what was the alternative? So he hurried through the ruined, derelict armory, checking inside, beneath and behind everything he could find. Occasionally, he'd find a spare magazine or a few scattered shells.