But Peter did. It was the only way forward now: to find and utilize this mysterious heavy equipment to their advantage. And yet despite this information asymmetry the man revealed nothing as he demanded they compose and equip themselves as before to begin the long march into defea— victory they would soon find at the end of the many halls. Even Anya agreed this was the only way. Despite their desperate need to secure enough supplies to survive for God-Emperor knows how long it would be for naught if their only ticket to victory and survival was destroyed. As Henry had said, even if their supplies were destroyed there was always the admittedly risky but still real possibility of eating the enemy instead. It wasn’t clear they could survive such a thing, but if forced into the choice between traditional food and death by lack of arms and starvation but enough weapons to procure a possible food source…. Well, one option at least had some hope of escape.
So again they stepped into the gray hall and prepared themselves in the square formation and again began to move tactically, but at some point down one of the many long spans Anya finally had enough of watching Chris limply drag his legs. It wasn’t only out of concern for him and the others, but equally as much for herself. She had blood caked on her own arm from where the nerve had been severed, and the whole of her outsides and insides hurt like hell from the exertion, not to mention the mental fatigue of constantly having to be on edge.
“We should step down the readiness level.” she suggested loudly, hoping for and succeeding in getting the group to stop their death-march.
“The enemy waits for exactly that to drive a dagger in our back.” Henry suggested. He wasn’t wrong. The hall had desaturated beyond 90% and Anya only just noticed. It was hard to tell, but the already bland scenery was subtly off in ways that the fluorescent light alone couldn’t explain. Color had begun to return in full lacking glory in this place without sunlight after they made it to the armory, but again being outside its closed door and walls it had become clear that the enemy was near.
“We can’t afford to let down our guard.” Lululu added, and Dio agreed. “It’s stupid.”
Jesús couldn’t resist throwing out a barb. “Your feminine stupidity—” he began, but Luther cut him off. “Shut up Jesús”
“You want to die, monkey?!”
“Shut up, Jesús.” Anya commanded. He looked at her quizzically like “do you think you can order me around you stupid ****,” but then he realized that, in fact, she was operating as his superior in this instance and he himself needed to shut his wet tongue-hole for the second time. He looked to the ground, dejected, as his grand glorious message of sublime truth fell on deaf ears.
Raethor parted his lips to speak but Anya interrupted him. “If we don’t slow down, some of us will break, and if some of us break the whole formation will fall apart. We can’t afford to slow down because then we’ll never arrive in time, so as a result our only option is to break this approach and step down our readiness level.”
This time, Raethor had the first words. “I agree.” He himself looked pale and tired. It was uncharacteristic of his burly and ostentatious frame. Anya wanted to ask him what was wrong, but as her superior in the midst of command it would be undermining his post, so she held her tongue. So they began to walk normally at moderate pace without portions of them sprinting and stopping to allow for maximum readiness and target coverage. She knew it was a bad idea, and as the steps went on it became more and more clear that this was a bad way forward, but they had no other options.
The color continued to desaturate as the endless halls stretched on and on into the distance.
80% became 70.
70 became 65.
65 became 40.
40 became 0.
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And they walked once again in a black and white world whose fluorescent glow had lost even what little blue it had possessed. But their feet stretched on and the halls continued. There was no other option. Nor was there red. Nor was there blue. There was only gray and gray and gray and gray and gray and gray and black-white gray. It stretched off in all directions. White wall. Black darkness. White wall. Black darkness. Edges of their mixture between. White spots above. Dark shadows below. The units’ feet continued forward through this dead space devoid of even the most basic signs of life.
The base didn’t care. Its lips did not speak sweet nothings and comfort to them through the walls. Its eyes did not watch them moving ever-forward into its depths. Its endless teeth did not devour them. Its many tongues did not so much as touch their boots. It was neither subservient nor above them, only the walls. Only the force that conditioned the air and maintained their supplies. It would continue to do so long after their departure. It would serve the flesh-beast necrite horde as well as the current occupiers. But for now it did not care, and for eternity it never would. The walls would not cry when the occupants died. The floor would not scream for lack of trampling.
But inside its many long walls the base did have much in store for them. It had been some thirty or forty minutes of marching uneventfully by this point, and though the enemy could easily have ambushed them it seemed to have a pension for the dramatic. There were no attacks for the next ten or twenty minutes as Anya’s mental and physical state continued to decay. Her pills had a short half-life, and with every additional dosage the exponential depreciation of their effects mounted. And in the absence of stimulants and power her weak body’s natural strength had returned. A military body honed by years of training found itself with the exhaustion of a new recruit. She was some infant tossed to the long halls to be destroyed as the others dragged her lifeless corpse along against the concrete floor to rub away its skin and reveal what was inside her. Not even she knew what would happen in desperation, but didn’t they all? None of them had been on the true point of death. They were soldiers, but in this time that meant either death or survival. There was no close call or third outcome. Even as Melissa’s position of medic had become less and less necessary thanks to their augmentation, as their energy waned they began to feel more and more like unaugmented soldiers.
And those poor sods would be tossed to rifle-fire without regard for their lives, making the existence of a nurse equally unnecessary. They would pour over the top of a ridge and find their comrades dead beside them, falling forward as they themselves acknowledged there was no hope for survival. But there would be more bodies. There were always more bodies behind to push you forward, and though at some singular point along the endless rows there would come one whose victory and survival was assured, the chance of this was both slim and known. Those halfway up the battlefield knew from the moment they pressed forward that this would be their end.
But staying behind was somehow worse. And Anya felt this way now. Of the looming pressing dread compressing her spine from above as an endless weight and gravity. She knew they all felt it. She could see Raethor’s shoulders beginning to slump as his chest took hold of the battle between them and the rear delts, exhausted and only barely hanging on to futile resistance.
But more than the physical exhaustion, the endless steps into black and whiteness grated on them all. This place without the sun was already so hard to survive. This place without grass and company and progress had at last found its dead end going forward. The doors were closed, and they were trapped inside. It would be possible to leave, but nonetheless they were trapped inside by duty and by obligation to themselves and others. What would it mean for a soldier to abandon their post in a time like this? They would all die, and yet to abandon their duty now would cause a fate worse than death to greet them in a beaming smile as though it had always been waiting from behind, just out of sight, to embrace the stragglers and the weak among them.
But for now the choice between death and death made itself clear and as it ever was did not bother with the art of surprise. What need has death of an ambush? You can already clearly see its shadow. And as shadows the bodies of their enemy began to emerge from the darkness as unwrapped and contorted skin whose bindings had been shed loose to reveal what lay beneath. Exposed muscle bared itself in black and white before them from all directions. A thousand bodies hidden in the shadows had stepped out into the light of inverse day wrapped up in a lightbulb inside the walls that blotted out the sun. And yet now Anya was grateful for the lack of natural light, because even in the dim and low-contrast halls of this base now filled to bursting with occupants, she felt sick just looking at the display and was unsure if she could stomach a clear picture of those who stood before her now.
Their every surface oozed the slime of decay, though there was no smell. Some were more viscous than others. Some dripped wetly, and though there was no color it was clear that all of them were red and red and red, and if there was to be a scent it was clear that the only choice would be pungent iron and rotting flesh.