Syberian Sunrise (20 page)

They'd hit the surface and-

-an explosion ripped through the room.

Enzo barely had time to throw himself out of the way, grabbing Eve as he did so and pulling her back as, high overhead, the cargo lift disappeared in an expanding plume of orange and yellow flames. Debris and rocks came raining down. He could hear Lee shouting amidst the chaos. Enzo crashed to the ground, rolled over onto his back and let out a small shout of surprise as saw a hefty rock coming right for him. He rolled out of the way, narrowly avoiding the impact, and scrambled to his feet. Stumbling several times, he ran from the lift.

A moment later the rocks stopped falling. Enzo turned and surveyed the area, praying that he hadn't been the only survivor. Being alone in this godforsaken mine might be a bit much, even for him. Things lurked in the darkness down here. A long moment of silence passed, then he heard a noise. Hurrying over, he spied Eve trying to push a steel beam off of her. For a second, he was worried it had crushed her, but he saw that she was merely pinned and it didn't even need to be pushed off. She just had to crawl out.

The beam rested on the floor and a partially crushed crate, lying over her body.

“Here,” Enzo said, giving her hand. He pulled her out from beneath it.

“Where's Lee?” she asked.

“I'm here, I'm fine,” Lee replied, coming out from behind a particularly large rock. “We got lucky, that could have been a real cave-in.”

“Well,” Enzo said, staring at the ruined lift, “this thing is obviously out of order. I don't suppose there's another way out.”

“There is, actually, a secondary lift. It's back down, the darkened tunnel we passed earlier at the crossroads,” Eve replied.

“Fantastic,” Enzo muttered. “Well, let's get moving.”

* * * * *

They retraced their steps, heading back to the crossroads. They stopped at the arched entrance to the dead-lit tunnel. The light didn't reach very far before it guttered out. Even flicking on their flashlights didn't help too much. Enzo sighed and took point, the butt of his rifle tucked into his shoulder, finger inside the trigger guard for now. More chance of a misfire that way, but he'd rather risk that than not being able to shoot a Mutant or Harvester in time. Eve came up beside him and Lee covered the rear. They began making slow progress down the tunnel, both he and Eve covering their half of the tunnel as they went.

“Do you really think you have a chance to survive if you go galactic with your information on Dark Ops?” Enzo asked after a long moment.

“I think so. I
do
like being alive, despite what you might think,” Eve replied. “I know how to cover my tracks. It's less about
me
getting the info out and more that the info has gotten out. But even so...I feel like something's off here. Like Dark Ops is doing something they don't want the rest of the government and military to know about.”

“Like they've gone rogue?” Enzo replied.

“Yeah, maybe.”

“You could be wrong.”

“That has happened before.”

Something shifted up ahead. The trio stopped. A low growl came to them. Enzo and Eve focused their lights further down the tunnel. A moment later, a Mutant stepped into the light. Followed by another, then two more, and, near their feet, a pack of Harvesters.

“Shit,” Eve whispered harshly.

“Get ready,” Enzo replied.

Lee joined them. The trio stood shoulder to shoulder, weapons trained on the horde of Altered as they began rushing towards them. They opened fire. Bullets flew, creatures shrieked, blood was spilled. The droning screams of combat overloaded the sounds of the meat impacts as the bullets found their marks. Enzo blew the chest out of the lead Mutant, then snapped his barrel down, squeezed the trigger and watched as bloody chunks of skull were torn away in a plume of gore from a Harvester. Shifting the barrel again, he shot out the eye of a second Harvester, watching the bullets blow out the back of its misshapen head.

Others fell. He heard Eve laughing as she fired. He wondered if it was the first time in this whole conflict she'd really gotten the chance to mow the bastards down. Enzo finished off his magazine as the last Mutant fell.

“Having fun?” he asked as he reloaded.

“Yes! It's so nice to be able to just straight-up kill these fuckers. Most of my time is spent behind a terminal screen. I've rarely had to pull the trigger. Although during my time spent in this hellhole I've had to more than my whole life before this combined.”

“It's kind of fun, huh?” Lee asked as they kept going.

“Yes,” Eve replied. “At least, it is when it goes well.”

The tunnel seemed to go on forever. Occasionally, they passed side passageways that led away into an even deeper darkness. Enzo felt a chill pass through him as he stared down each of those tunnels. There was something basic and primal in the fear of the dark. Not the darkness itself, but of what the shadows held. A throwback to caveman days when absolutely anything could be out there, beyond the reach and safety of the warmth and comfort of the flames and the shelter of the cave. Only now, the monsters were real.

After what seemed like ages, the tunnel finally opened up into another cavern. This one wasn't too big. It was littered with the remnants of the long-forgotten mining setup. The flashlight beams reached out, probing tendrils of light searching the subterranean wastes for their escape. Finally, they all centered on it: a pitiful old lift, the shaft of which was carved right into the rock fifteen feet overhead. Enzo walked over to it and pointed his light directly up it. The beam went up and disappeared, showing no end in sight.

“Well, this is it,” he said.

“And that means we've got to fix it,” Lee said.

“We might not need to. There's a chance we can find a generator and get it running. This lift might be in disrepair, but it might just need power,” Eve said. She shined her light around the edges of the lift, then focused on a thick, black cable. “Come on.”

She began following it. Enzo and Lee went after her. They followed the cable, which was lashed to the floor with large shiny staples, into a side tunnel. It went on for a ways. There didn't seem to anything else in the tunnel with them. Enzo was hoping that all the other Altered were either busy building their little nests down below or up top for now. It was a nasty thing to hope, but it'd keep them out of his hair.

Finally, the cable ended in a generator. The device was dead, but they finally caught a lucky break. Someone had left behind a crate with a pair of power cells in it. Enzo and Eve quickly replaced the cells, which still functioned, while Lee watched their ass. Within five minutes, they had the generator up and running. The trio hurried back down the narrow corridor to the central chamber. Enzo did a quick sweep of the area, but nothing had found its way into the room while they'd been off repairing the generator.

So they'd managed to catch an actual lucky break.

Finally.

Enzo got onto the lift and fired it up. A few sparks popped out of the machinery, but otherwise it seemed to be in decent working order. Not without a little bit of trepidation, Lee and Eve stepped onboard as well.

“Going up,” Enzo muttered as he hit up button.

The lift began ascending.

Chapter 16

–
Endgame
–

The elevator came to a halt.

Enzo stepped out first, playing his light across the flat, gunmetal gray walls and stacks of crates. They'd come to a disused storage bay. There were no lights on, but nothing smelled of decay or the reek of the Altered.

“Looks clear,” he said, stepping deeper into the bay.

His footsteps echoed into the lonely darkness. All around him, he became aware of a growing white noise: the muffled shriek of arctic winds. Finally. They had, in fact, come to the surface. It felt like a breath of fresh air, even in this dusty old room. It was clear that Dark Operations had hid the secondary lift inside of an area they'd likely shut down. The lift itself was hidden behind stacks of crates that the trio had to navigate to find the way out. The narrow alcoves created by the stacks sent Enzo's instincts into overdrive.

It felt like there could be anything hidden in the gloom. He made himself calm down. There was a very good chance no Altered had made it here. Even if they did, he was sure he'd smell them. He'd become accustomed to the scent over the past several hours. No one spoke as they kept moving, listening for any other sounds above the winds and their own movements. After another moment, they finally came to the exit.

They gathered by the door.

“So, what's the plan?” Enzo asked. A moment's silence passed. “I assume you have a plan.”

“I didn't really get a good look at the place when I came in. They just kind of hustled me through,” Lee replied.

“I've got something of an idea of where we are,” Eve replied. “So, there's three primary buildings. The first is the weather station itself, that's where the hangar is at. The second is the control tower, it's its own structure. The third is storage, where the primary elevator was. We shouldn't need to bother with that. I suggest we first make for the hangar in the primary building and see if there's any way off this rock.”

“Okay, but what about Fielding and the Alpha? I mean, I feel like we can kill Fielding...probably, without too much trouble. But what about the Alpha? We don't really have big guns or explosives or anything,” Enzo replied.

“That's a good point,” Lee murmured.

“Well...um...” Eve stopped speaking, falling deep into thought. Suddenly, her face lit up. “Okay! I've got it! When I was looking through the files in the Control Room, I saw that Dark Ops had a plan to destroy the storage area, so that they could have a cover to ship more building supplies into the underground while pretending to rebuild the warehouse. The official story would have been some leftover mining charges accidentally got set off. The mining charges are in the warehouse. So we use them to kill the Alpha.”

“How?” Lee asked.

“Lure the Alpha into the warehouse after wiring it to blow,” Enzo replied.

“Okay...you two, go secure the ship. I'm going to go set the charges,” Lee said.

Eve looked like she wanted to argue...probably to argue that
Enzo
should be the one to do it, but he spoke up instead. “Good luck.”

“Thanks. You too,” Lee replied.

They opened the door and stepped out into the snow.

The cold was an immediate and painful thing. They were in near whiteout conditions. A storm was raging, making the whole thing even more difficult.

“What's where?!” Lee called.

Three lines of poles, each with a brilliantly glowing aquamarine light set atop it, led away from the building. Eve pointed towards the rightmost one.

“That's storage!” she called. “Middle one's the tower! Left is where we want to go!”

“Let's get to it!” Enzo yelled, struggling to be heard over the shrieking winds.

Lee set off, disappearing before too long into the swirling white and gray snowstorm. Enzo shouldered his rifle and began kicking through the snow, Eve in tow behind him. They made slow, painful progress through the raging storm, following the line of light-poles. Enzo wondered if this plan was really going to work. Part of him wanted to just take the ship, (if there even
was
a ship), and leave the two of them behind.

It wasn't that he was a coward, he'd faced down insane odds more times than he cared to count. It was just that...he was tired. One thing a man learned as he got older and he was in the business of shooting or rescuing people, usually both in the same mission, it was that there was always going to be another fucking fire to put out. It didn't stop. It wasn't
going
to stop, ever. There would always be more situations, more psychos with guns threatening the innocent, more people to rescue, more people to kill, more, more, more...

When he'd walked away from Special Operations, he'd walked away from that life. From putting his own life on the line over and over again for people who either didn't know or didn't care. What's worse, his job became less about making the galaxy a better place and more about covering some fucking bureaucrat’s or politician's ass. He'd gotten sick of it. So he left. The fact of the matter was, you had to look out for yourself.

Enzo Rains had looked out for himself for so long that it had become second nature. Which was, he thought, a hilarity. One of the biggest hurdles to overcome when being in the Marines, and doubly so for Spec Ops, was getting past the self-preservation instinct. You learned that you covered not just your own ass, but you covered everyone else's in your squad and the civilians or hostages or whoever you were trying to save or defend.

He'd done pretty good since leaving for looking after his own ass...but he'd never really completely reversed that hurdle. He'd never fully swung back the other direction. He still saved people if he could, he rarely left a man behind, even if the mission was bad. As they neared the main structure, Enzo made a decision. He'd stay, he'd help, he'd fight. Both Fielding and the Alpha were going to die, and if he could help it, both Eve and Lee were going to get off of this planet with him. Besides, he thought with a smile, maybe he could turn it into a three-way.