Samar heard the faint sounds of water rushing ahead as he was moved further ahead on the trail. The trees were scraggly, almost dead things scattered around half-hidden in the rising fog. His unit was loosely organized around him as they approached the river. The forest was dead silent as the evening approached, not that there were many animals to begin with. Only the most resilient and savage creatures survived in Zone- NX34 these days.
There was a faint rustling from the bushes nearby. Samar focused on the nano-cluster in the back of his neck, and brought up his Team Command.
PI-S (Purge Infantry- Scout): Health- 100% Mental Status- Alert; Fatigue- 7%, AGILITY ENHANCER-2/2
PI-S (Purge Infantry- Scout): Health- 100% Mental Status- Alert; Fatigue- 8%, AGILITY ENHANCER-2/2
PI-S (Purge Infantry- Scout): Health- 100% Mental Status- Alert; Fatigue- 8%, AGILITY ENHANCER-2/2
MR-CM (Medical Researcher- Nanotech Specialist): Health- 100% Mental Status- Alert, Nervous; Fatigue- 17%, BOOST- 3/3
PI-G (Purge Infantry - Grenadier): Health- 100% Mental Status- Alert; Fatigue- 10%, ADRENALINE BOOST
PI-M (Purge Infantry - Machine Gunner): Health- 100% Mental Status- Alert; Fatigue- 12%, ADRENALINE BOOST-2/2
“We're too loud.” Samar transmitted through the hyper web.
“Acknowledged.” He got five responses as the sounds of movement in the forest around him die down. Samar scanned the map in his HUD to check if they are still on the correct path. An hour before they had received orders from their Citadel’s AI that there had been an anomaly detected in the surrounding forest. There had been a surge of an unknown energy and something organic had tampered with one of their drones before it went dark. Their orders had been to discover the location and source of the disturbance, scout ahead for any Ferals and purge the sector. The Machine Spirit had decreed, and it shall be done.
As he thought about the AI, Samar felt a familiar gentle nudge in the back of the head. He released his control on his body’s movement and felt it going into autopilot as he went into communion with the Machine Spirit. Samar had a dim awareness of the surroundings passing by as he quickly went through the data, he was getting through all he visual and audio feed through the rest of his squad members. He could see the Heavy Infantry grunt trying to move through the clearing without making a lot of noise, a task made difficult because of his bulky augmented body and a huge railgun. He switched to one of the scouts ahead, the Machine Spirit forming a conduit between them as he quickly looked through his eyes and scanned for any threats.
His emotions, which had been spiking out of control before, quickly soothed down as the Machine Spirit clamped down on his panic by injecting mild sedatives through the nano cluster.
“CALM DOWN”, the Spirit told him. “IT’S A PATROL. YOU JUST HAVE TO INSPECT THE DRONE. THERE IS NOTHING TO FEAR”
The Machine Spirit had been a presence in Samar’s head as far as he could remember. After the fall of human civilization during “The Culling”, the remaining humans were down to a few thousand in number. They began to use every resource available to ensure that number did not went down. One of those measures was the integration of the Citadel’s AI with the medical nanites which were given as a vaccine to every human infant. This AI acted as a guardian, keeping them healthy and safe from harm. As they grew older, it interfaced with the mainframe to keep a track of the individual and assist with their specialization. People could specialize as Essential Workers which consisted of Farmers, System Maintenance Operators; Special Operatives which included Citadel Security, Enforcers and Purge Forces; and lastly the Medical Researchers who had the most important and demanding job of curing the Blight which had turned Earth into a wasteland. The Medical Researchers was made up of Bio-Engineers and Nanotech Specialists.
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There was a grunting noise. He could feel the Spirit directing his vision, telling him to look towards the north-west.
“DRONE DETECTED” It told him. Samar tried to slow down his heartbeat as the alarm went through the web to his escort.
The next thing he knew, they had arrived at the site. Samar stood over the drone as the men moved further away in the forest. He used his ocular implant to scan the drone. Something had torn of the propulsors from the body, and the jagged metal at the edges showed him how strong that something was.
Recon Drone Model Y-431
Structural Integrity- 67%
Nanites- 5 clusters
Connect? Y/N
Samar willed it to connect with him. He sank down into the ground as his mind melded with the Drone’s processor. He went through its memory and replayed a recording of it flying around on its patrol around their Citadel when there was a loud explosion, and it came crashing down.
“EXTRACT THE NANITES”
“Affirmative.” Samar answered. He placed his hand on the drone and willed the nanites in the drone to join him. He watched as a few drops of silvery liquid rose out of the drone. He willed a bone syringe to stretch out of my index finger and suck up the nanites. Samar nudged the Machine Spirit, asking it to display his HUD.
ID- R43090, Call Sign- Samar
(Clearance Level- Basic)
MR-CM (Medical Researcher- Combat Medic):
Health- 100% Mental Status- Alert, Nervous; Fatigue- 19%, BOOST- 3/3
Nano Clusters- 2 (R43090) + 5 (Y-431) ((7))
Specialization- Anatomy, Medicine, CCQ, Nanotechnology, Chemistry
Enhancements- Nano Forge (Internal), Enhanced Reflexes, Enhanced Dexterity, Refiner Model Gx32 (Internal).
Commendations- 1
He broke off from his status as his aural implant buzzed with a message from one of his team members.
“Bio signatures detected ahead, Sir”
“Affirmative. Move ahead and flank it” Samar ordered the scouts. He checked his HUD for confirmation and saw three large signatures up ahead. They appeared humanoid in shape and were milling about.
One of the scouts aimed at them and looked through his scope. It was one of the newer railgun models which didn’t have to be mounted on a vehicle
“They seem to be Ferals, Sir. Your orders?”
“Neutralize them. We’ll pick them up after we investigate the anomaly”
“Affirmative.”
Samar watched as three simultaneous pops rang out and the Ferals stumbled to the ground. He signaled his team to cover my back as I walk over to their unconscious bodies. Samar felt a shiver in his spine as he saw the grotesque features twisted in shock, the muscles twisted and shrunken till the bones are almost poking out of the skin. Their eyes were deep and sunken, their faces gaunt and sallow while their bellies were bloated up with whatever beast had been unlucky enough to end up as their meal. The Railgun’s projectile had gone clean through his spine, leaving only a molten hole that was still steaming. Samar felt bile rising and quickly looked away from the corpse of what was once a human two generations ago.
The Culling was a global epidemic which caused the death of over 3 billion people by disease alone, another 5 billion in the Feral Wars that followed. All because of the infiltrators that were trying to smuggle a sample of the new Hantavirus from the Research facility in Incheon were not trained well enough to follow certain safety protocols.
Ferals were the bane of what little of civilization we had left. Once, they were the privileged and the powerful, who had access to everything but had lost everything to a cruel twist of fate. When the Culling was ravaging through the world and just starting to become a global nightmare, a group of Israeli scientists had claimed to make a vaccine that would protect them from the virus. The government has ramped up its production and the rich and the mighty had chomped at the bit to get their hands on it. Initially it seemed to be working and the virus had seemed to slow down. The deaths had slowed down from hundreds of thousands every day to a couple of hundred, and that was where the vaccine could not be supplied because of the demand. They turned out to be the lucky ones.
It had started with insomnia.
The newly vaccinated people complained that they could not get enough sleep. Many of them thought it was from the stress. They took pills and it helped for a little while. But they stopped working soon as they started building an abnormal tolerance to any foreign substance in their body. The vaccine had been a mix of nanites and a serum which was supposed to hyper-boost the immunity, recognize dangerous virus and toxins the second they were introduced and do in minutes what the human bodies did in years. But they worked a little too well in certain areas. More than a billion people who are unable to sleep filled with medical nanites that produce hormones and biochemicals to keep the body going. At the time, they were not bound with the Machine Spirit. They went crazy in a few weeks, and the world went crazy with them.
“DON’T BE DISTRACTED,” The Spirit admonished him.
Obviously, it was at that moment when a seven-foot man burst out of the bushes and stabbed Samar with a … bayonet?