Chapter Forty-Three - Snacks

"Oh, these look different," Crystal said as she picked up a handful of MREs and stuffed them into a bag. She took a moment to look at the writing on each, and flicked some of them off to the side where they'd thump against the storage room floor.

"Why are you discarding some?" Alice asked. She was only paying partial attention to Crystal and her antics. The majority of her attention was on the rest of the lab where guards were trying to find ways to get to them.

Some were fetching flashlights, as if that would penetrate the walls of darkness she'd swallowed some corridors in, others were shooting into the darkness itself, to little effect. Alice did have to rip one enterprising scientist away from a fuse box on the far end of the lab. It looked like he was about to cut the power to the storage room, and while she could easily see in the dark, she wasn't so sure about Vasilisa.

The girl in question was packing a bag of her own in a hurry as well. Her own gear was dumped on a bench, discarded from the moment she found better. The mercenary guards that this lab employed had good equipment, from what Alice could tell.

The backpacks Vasilisa and Crystal had picked up were larger, with several pockets on the exterior all done up in a dark green canvas-ish material. Vasilisa was stuffing hers full of everything she could grab. Small med kits, MREs, a couple of boxes of snack bars were opened and dumped into the pack. Then she found the armoury at the back of the room and stared at the guns within.

Alice snapped her fingers and the lock on the door burst apart. Vasilisa jumped, then turned to look her way. "Just take whatever," Alice replied.

Vasilisa didn't need to be told twice. She ran in and came out with a box of ammo that she opened. Loose rounds were stuffed into one of the backpack's pockets, then already-filled magazines were tossed into the pack.

She hesitated between two rifles. One picked from a guard, another fresh out of the armoury. She picked the armoury gun, letting the other drop to the side.

"Why that one?" Alice asked.

Vasilisa looked up, then clued in to what Alice meant. "It has a sight," she said before raising the gun. "PSO. They're... okay?"

"Alright," Alice said. She really didn't know much about guns in general. She suspected that a few of her friends knew more. Phantom Mist used one, on occasion, and Burning Ultranova loved stealing guns from any adversary they fought that used those. She liked the noise they made when she sprayed bullets at enemies, but her aim was... questionable at best.

"You... don't mind me having this?" Vasilisa asked.

"You're not a threat, even with a rifle," Alice said. "Keep packing, we're going to head out soon."

Some of the scientists were breaking into a safe in an office and removing... normal household items. A fork, a water bottle, a pill bottle, a well-used paint brush. Alice didn't know what they did, but she sensed that these were anomalous objects, like the iron that Koschei had. And if that was the case, there was a real possibility that they didn't want to be here when they started to use those things.

She was quite certain in her own ability to avoid dying--she hadn't died yet, after all--but she wasn't sure she'd be able to help Vasilisa, or counter some unknown time-based magics.

"I picked out the best foods!" Crystal said. She raised a bag filled to the brim with... well, there were some MREs in it, the rest was picked out of the storage room's pantry. There were nuts and trail mix and several packets of jerky. "There's enough snacking material here to last a week, easy."

"Thank you," Vasilisa said. She slung her backpack on, then shouldered her new rifle. "I'm ready to go."

"Then let's," Alice said. She opened the door out of the storeroom, then glanced both ways, though she didn't truly need to. "We're returning to where we entered," she said.

"We're not going to take that shortcut that Raivis mentioned?" Crystal asked. "The exit closer to the centre?"

"I'd rather not. Let's acclimatise ourselves to the Zone rather than push too deep into it all at once," Alice said. "That feels like the wiser course, at the moment."

"Alright," Crystal said. "We have all the time in the world, and weeks worth of stuff for Vasilisa." She hopped on the spot, causing the pack she was now wearing to clank and shuffle noisily. Alice considered doing something about that, but she decided it could wait for the moment.

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"This way, then," Alice said. There were deep pits of shadow pooling in the air throughout the corridors, but she had them pull back to make room for her companions to pass. Vasilisa kept close to her, edging away from the shadows and darkened areas.

She squeaked when a shadow pushed outwards, forming into the shape of the hand trying to press out of it. Alice sighed, and the shadows pulled their captive back in.

"So, are we killing them all?" Crystal asked.

"No," Alice said. "I suspect they would have killed us, but... we have the moral imperative."

They were usually the most powerful people around, with some few exceptions where they had to work together to overcome someone stronger than one of them alone.

The moral imperative was what they called the... more-or-less ethical actions they took when given the option to do so. It wasn't exactly a ruleset, though Alice wished they could codify it into something like that. It was, instead, more of a set of guidelines and examples.

Basically, while all of her friends, and Alice herself, could kill and force their way through any obstacle, this was often... not the morally correct thing to do. Power didn't come with responsibility. Power came with power, and that was all. The sense of responsibility came from within one's self, and she tried to abide by that.

It meant, at times, leaving some people alive that she'd rather not. It meant arresting villains rather than killing them. It meant, back on Earth, that they'd often tackle societal issues from a big picture perspective instead of tossing CEOs and politicians out of windows.

Some of them were better at that than others. Burning Ultranova had a running policy that said that Nazis didn't count as humans, and were therefore not offered the same respect.

In any case, the guards in this place had maybe troubled them a little, but they were hardly deserving of an unceremonious execution via the ever-hungry void, and Alice didn't have the time or patience to figure out how law enforcement would handle this situation.

So they were leaving, and they'd be left to their own devices.

If they were smart, which they seemed to think they were, then they'd take the lesson to heart: Alice and her companions were the bigger fish, and ought to be left alone.

If she discovered that they were being followed and harassed, then that would be a second strike. Alice rarely let things reach the third-strike phase.

They ran into Raivis. The man was sweating, his glasses bent, his nose bleeding and his eyes wild. He swallowed on seeing them, then raised a small folder up. "I... I got the maps," he said. "But... please, we weren't going to harm you, we just needed to... to know."

"Thank you," Alice said as she took the folder from him. It was a nice folder. Leather bound with a thin strap to keep it closed. Opening it revealed several maps folded up nice and neatly within. "Good enough." She flicked her hand to the side, and Raivis screamed as the walls swallowed him.

She heard Vasilisa swallow behind her. That was likely due to how quiet the facility had become. Her shadows swallowed the sound as well, dampening it to some degree.

They reached the entrance they had originally used to enter the facility. Alice paused, listening for any signs of an ambush. Satisfied that they were clear, she motioned for Crystal and Vasilisa to follow her outside.

The cool air of the Zone hit them like a wave, a stark contrast to the sterile atmosphere of the facility. Alice took a deep breath, feeling the tension in her shoulders ease slightly. They were out, but still within that large abandoned factory.

"Alright," she said, unfolding one of the maps. "We need to find a safe place to rest and plan our next move. The inner Zone is dangerous, but we now have guidance. I want a place to look over these maps from. An apartment, or a clean commercial building. Something with a roof."

"I'm sure we can find something like that," Crystal said. She turned towards the door into the lab, then with a snap of her finger, covered it in a thick wall of crystal. "And now we have plenty of time!"

***