Nevermore/Short Stories
Doai Station
The flickering lights of the rescue vehicles brightened the snowy landscape in the early dark evening.
The ten members of the Kitsune team moved around, near the steps, as they silently gazed at the entrance to the site which, in the moonlight rising on the horizon, appeared to be a miniature pyramid from some time long past.
But it was not a pyramid, far from it. It was just the entrance to the old abandoned station that lay in ruins. The place had been abandoned more than a century and a half ago, and they had had to resort to the maps of the Ancient Era, to be sure of the internal structure of it. But, even so, they could not be sure what the place looked like inside, with so many decades of abandonment and with the subway water currents, added to the humidity, it was more than certain that the course of time had taken its toll on the place.
The old Doai Station ran in the old days with two lines, but that had changed with the depopulation of the rural areas, and the lines through the region were moved to an area that was more direct and simple. Two lines, but it was only one that interested the visitors that night.
The subway line.
The area was still quite visited by climbers and hikers because of Mount Tanigawa. And it was easy to reach the place, even if the old routes did not have the conductive system and had to be reached by traditional driving, or by air, although the forest canopy was something to be considered in such cases.
Even so, the station area was also frequented by lovers of historical and urban exploration, despite the fact that signs at the entrance indicated that access to the place was prohibited.
And everything would have continued in the same, if it were not for an incident that alerted the authorities.
It had all started on Friday afternoon. A party of three hikers, who were willing to camp and spend the night at the site, entered the old station with the idea of taking pictures of the place. Or at least that was the last messages they had posted on their social networks. Everything changed when their Neurowires devices stopped emitting signal at a point inside the station, not far from the entrance.
On Saturday noon, the families of two of them alerted the police that something might have happened to them, as they did not usually turn off their devices, especially on a hike, where in case of an accident it was vital to know the location. The police accompanied the autonomous park rangers to the site only to find some belongings abandoned at the campsite, but they found nothing where the signal had disappeared. The three had walked a little more than a kilometer from where they left the vehicle and tents set up. And the footprints were lost at the entrance to the station. Where one of the robots detected an unknown heat source moving several meters below the ground. It could not be hot springs, as those had long disappeared in the area.
The place quickly became a hotbed of rescue teams and ambulances. A team of specialized rescue soldiers, from the nearest base, arrived at the site in the evening hours of Saturday as twilight was setting in, ready to enter the area. They didn't get very far, though.
Someone else arrived at the exact moment they were about to enter. But that had been ten minutes earlier.
Yoshida, part of the Kitsune team, frowned and sighed, watching the mist in his mouth freeze and shuffled his feet over to the team's operator, Niigata. "Sir, are you sure you were right to send him alone?"
Niigata shrugged as if in reply, and loosened his grip on the assault rifle he carried. "What did you expect me to do? We can't question operational command if this is an DE."
"What are those Nevermore people thinking?"
"Who knows... we can only wait." Niigata pursed his lips and repeated Yoshida's words to himself. Send him alone…
And silently he looked at the footprints the SID agent had left behind him, before entering the station and, despite being trained for the most varied and dangerous missions, he could not deny that a shiver ran down his spine when he looked at the footprints.
The agent's footprints were common, like those produced by any tactical snowshoe. There should be nothing unusual about it. But they were two types of footprints.
The second set of footprints was a little smaller, but with the same pattern in the sole. There shouldn't be anything unusual about it either. Except for one detail. The Kitsune team only saw one SID agent go in. No one else.
Yet there were the second footprints that were drawn out of nowhere on the snow, as if they had no owner. However the SID agent had introduced himself and someone else that the others could not see.
***
Ryuuji smiled and pressed his lips together trying to hide a laugh. He didn't get to have it drawn out for long, when he received an elbow to his ribs from his partner, Natsuki.
"That hurts!"
" You deserve it for being an asshole."
"Pfft!...it's always kind of funny to see other people's reactions to seeing your footprints. I'm not going to stop introducing you and you know it."
"It's not worth it, what's the point? Humans can't see me...except for you."
"I don't care, you're my partner."
Ryuuji was a young man who looked to be in his early twenties. Slender, with brown eyes and dyed blond hair. He wielded a .22 caliber pistol with variable ammunition.
Natsuki, beside him, also with her pistol drawn, snorted as she tried to push back the strands of her brown bangs that covered one of her dark eyes.
They both wore long coats with protective pads that did nothing to disguise the tactical gear they wore in their dark clothes.
A drone accompanied them, hovering in front of them and scanning the area.
"What do you think it is this time?" Natsuki asked.
"I don't know, but the heat signature detected by the satellite was activated at about the same time the hikers disappeared. It can't be a coincidence."
"Let's hope it's just a subsurface steam chimney."
"There go our days of rest, before returning to the arena," Ryuuji snorted.
"You would have wasted them anyway. I can imagine your father."
"Yeah, he wasn't too happy to see me at the door when I arrived."
"At least they can see you, I almost gave my mother a heart attack when I tapped her on the shoulder to let her detect where I was."
"Yeah, people invisible to the spectrum of the human eye often produce that effect."
They walked carefully through the place, passing through the corridors and looking at the peeling paint on the walls and the old faded signs, stuck on the walls, whose words were barely legible due to the pass of time. Broken windows let in the cold outside, which hissed through the cracks, along with the sound of water from the nearby river.
Natsuki stopped and looked at a graffiti on the wall, it must be very old, because the paint was already looking faded, but that didn't stop her from reading the kanji. "They will return", the strange inscription read. Whoever was to return Natsuki wished it was only the missing hikers and nothing else. Most likely, given the age of the painting, it was referring to the period of the Great War, which for Them could only refer to the Fractus.
They continued to walk down the corridors and check the various musty-smelling rooms. They had come to a gallery with broken glass windows on the sides, the bottom of which was so dark that they could barely see a couple of meters beyond. They looked at each other and nodded. Natsuki ordered the drone to go ahead and it departed quickly while with its red light it scanned the place.
It was a gallery, that at its end began a tunnel that descended downwards. After moving forward a few meters Natsuki raised her eyebrows and looked at her companion. She was watching through Neurowire the images the drone was sending.
"This place is huge," she said.
"If the blueprints are right it's almost half a kilometer of stairs down to the platform."
"Seriously?"
The drone continued its journey in silence and Natsuki could see how indeed, in certain parts of the tunnel, parts of the roof had come loose and in other side areas water was gushing out from between the walls and had broken the foundations where moss was growing. The analysis sent by the drone did not seem to indicate anything strange, although it did not seem to indicate any sign of the lost group either.
They had searched all sides of the station and found nothing. All that remained was the huge tunnel with the abandoned subway station. It was a stretch that was going to take them a good ten minutes, not counting any obstacles they might have to overcome.
"What the hell happened to the power?"
"If it's cut off all around the perimeter, they probably can't reconnect it."
Ryuji reached behind his back and from the turtle backpack took out a small cube which he squeezed and brought it close to the walls. There were several sparks in various parts of the tunnel, and several of the old lights exploded while others stayed on albeit with flickering flashes.
"Well at least this is going to do the trick as long as the lights keep working," Ryuuji sighed and put the cube in one of the cases of his tactical equipment.
Indeed the stairs were so long that they could only see up to a certain number of meters. Due to the condensation, in the subway part of the stairs, a spectral mist formed, making the place even more gloomy.
They descended the steps, looking around in case they found any footprints indicating that the hikers had passed that way, but they found nothing. Only parts of the ceiling chipped and moss creeping up the walls.
Almost halfway down was when Ryuuji looked up at the ceiling and found that there were certain parts of the ceiling that were more sagging, and other parts of the staircase that were almost crushed, as if something really heavy had passed through. The mold on the walls, also exhibited a strange behavior, as if something had swept it away in certain parts leaving behind a parched looking film.
The drone hadn't detected anything strange in the analysis, but it would be better to take a look later. Ryuuji was about to examine it more closely, when Natsuki caught his attention.
"Damn it!"
"What happened?"
"The drone got stuck on something down there. It made it to the end of it, but there's probably more debris in that part."
"Can't you free it?"
"I think something fell on it…"
They both squinted at each other, put their weapons in their holsters and brought their hands to their waists.
"DRF-789," Ryuuji said.
"BLP-2I," Natsuki said.
Instantly larger weapons formed on their belts, with the fractal pattern and they took them, unfastening the safety locks. Ryuuji's weapon, a DragonFIRE 789 series, was a Fractium special ammunition tactical rifle. Natuski's weapon was somewhat reminiscent of the old UZI, although with a more ergonomic design. Its ammunition was plasma.
Better armed, they continued their descent, while from time to time, some of the lights exploded, and the amount of debris along with water gushing from the walls and mold increased.
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Finally they reached the top of the stairs, vaguely illuminated by dim yellowish lights. The fog was thick enough that they could not see beyond 20 feet, but not so thick that they could not see the amount of debris and water on the site that ran along one side of the abandoned tracks. They walked carefully, watching as a huge, turquoise-colored and metal-looking, ringed pipe blocked their path. They didn't know what it could do there. It was at least five feet in diameter and long enough that they couldn't see the end. But it wasn't rigid even though its texture appeared to be solid, as it bent in certain parts.
"Backpack," Natsuki said.
They both approached near one of the almost collapsed pillar and there they found one of the backpacks, that by its appearance didn't appear to be old despite the dirt.
"Where is the owner?" Ryuuji asked, looking around.
"Did you notice anything?"
"Yeah, there's no Neurowire reception down here. How can there be no signal?"
A metallic noise behind them made them turn around quickly. Quickly enough to dodge the huge metal tube that was now moving rapidly towards them, tearing through the fog.
"What the fuck?!" Natsuki cursed.
They both stepped back watching as the pillars, where the backpack was held, was destroyed due to the blow, throwing debris all over the place.
They didn't have time to worry too much about it, because they had to dodge another attack, this time by another pipe from the side of the tracks. But they could see how it moved with unusual speed and snaked and twisted with blows. In a matter of seconds they were dodging blows from all sides as they watched thick pieces of the ceiling fall with each blow.
"What the hell is this thing?" Ryuuji asked.
Because they had no signal they couldn't count on the help of the FRT surface team, that should have arrived on the scene by now.
"Some kind of robot?"
"How big is it? And what the hell is it doing here?"
Natsuki dodged another blow and fired her weapon at the huge tube, but the plasma did not produce the slightest damage. To make matters worse, with each hit of the huge thing there were only a few lights left in the place and, due to the presence of fog, it didn't help at all to know the location. It was everywhere and in spite of that it moved with an unusual ease around the place.
Ryuuji dodged one of its blows from one side and didn't see how he was attacked from the other side. The strike almost crushed him against one of the walls. He slid down and fell towards the tracks. But there was something else that worried him.
In his SID career he had seen all kinds of things and in training he remembered something.
The texture of that huge "tube," it wasn't cold like metal, though it even sounded like metal.
"Chimerical Chitin!" he shouted, trying to make Natsuki hear him. Because of the fight, he had lost sight of her in the fog.
"The what?"
"This thing looks like chimerical chitin! This thing is not inanimate! It's an insect!"
Natsuki hearing that, saw a new ramming and shooting approaching and with a quick maneuver jumped over the huge tube. If her partner was right. There was something that worried her.
"If it's an insect, where's the head?"
In the whole attack they had not seen any head at any time, there was only a possibility that they were being attacked by several insects.
"Unless... Natsuki! You haven't seen any legs at any time, have you?
"No!!!" she replied angrily as she changed the weapon to a sword with a molecular vibration blade. But this time she directed the attack towards the ringed joints. The blade gave off just a few sparks on the greenish surface, which made her wonder if it really was an insect, unless if Ryuuji was right and it was some kind of chimera, there was a chance it had some extra composition besides chitin.
It hardly produced any sparks…
"Oh shit!" she said angrily as she dodged another blow, but this time she could see a change taking place in the spot where she had hit it. It was as if a heat source was illuminating from within the huge insect. But she already knew that. Without taking an extra second she sent an order to her Neurowire to activate a mask she carried in her backpack. It took less than a second to form over her face and alerted her partner, who without a second thought did the same.
"What's going on?!" Ryuuji asked.
"This is a Glycera Uroboros. An armored bloodworm. We can't see the head because the whole body is attached. It only shows its head when it feeds!"
"An Uroboros worm?! How did it get here?"
"It must have been here a long time judging by the color. The outer layer is an alloy containing copper. That's the greenish color."
They both stopped talking since no further explanation was needed. As far as Ryuuji remembered those types of beings were rare but they didn't belong to anything ancient, it was a species that had appeared after the Great War.
They were not plague, but dangerous and poisonous. Although, one of the curious things about them was that, their study became one of the reasons of developing for the self-replicating technology, since like their congeners on earth, those types of worms produced an enzyme in their gelatinous bodies to manufacture a copper jaw.
As an exogenous species after the war, they constituted a biological curiosity, about which several specimens were kept, although in engineering they were of obligatory study for anyone who studied the fields of morphogenesis applied to industrial pseudo-biological engineering. Not to mention the fact that it possessed the characteristic of being able to hide its head in its tail. This was supposed to be some sort of auto-preservation mechanism, to protect its softer parts from possible predators.
The problem was that the original Glycera Uroboros had never been that big. Its species was only a few centimeters long. The change in size had been occurring over the years. And there were several theories that claimed that the Gateway Trees, along with the composition of the Earth's atmosphere, may have had much to do with their mutation. The first ones of much larger size and with a full copper shell had been discovered decades ago in humid areas of North America and Europe, although in very isolated spots, and in small numbers so they were never considered a threat.
But, as far as they were aware, they had never reached the Pacific, so this find was a rarity. How long had they been hanging around there unseen? It must have been incredibly old given its size and the green laminate of oxide covering the copper of its body segments.
Whatever it was, the mask was a good idea. The heat produced by the inner core caused the outer rings to release poisonous gases from the tiny gas chambers between them. Toxic enough to intoxicate an adult who were exposed for several minutes.
"How are we going to stop it?" Ryuuji asked.
"Sound?"
"It has a drier sound near the head, right?"
"Yeah." nodded Natsuki.
As they tried to dodge the blows that threatened to crush them, and the debris flying everywhere, both tried to hit the monster in various places to try to elucidate where the head would be. At the same time the drone freed itself from the grip of the debris, and began to hover around the area looking for the lost hikers. That the creature's name was Bloodworm, did not bode well for Natsuki about the whereabouts of the missing three.
After another minute of fighting, Ryuuji finally landed a blow on the armor, that indicated he had hit a part where the sound changed. Yet there was still the problem of it showing its head only.
"How do we get its head out of its ass?" Ryuuji asked.
Natsuki, taking a few jumps, reached the side opposite to where her partner was, and unloaded a strong blow with the sword that produced new sparks. The monster reacted violently and twisted again forcing them to take distance, but Natsuki could see how the hit place was glowing again. As if the worm's internal heat source was activated every time it suffered a stronger blow than usual.
But it was in a way what she was looking for from the beginning. If she remembered correctly what she had read, it was the only way to make the head appear. Provoking it to activate the heat sources near the tail was the only way to make its head appear.
There was a snapping sound of something that sounded like it was cracking, followed by other sound of something sticky peeling off. They were both thankful they had their masks on at that moment. The monster's head coming out of its own tail released, a cloud of gases that filled the entire platform.
https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/42dd80f9-5ac6-42d5-8ccc-bcea020b6152/dfsk7pc-37f37b06-7786-4db2-9f34-d5f7f88f03d0.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7InBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcLzQyZGQ4MGY5LTVhYzYtNDJkNS04Y2NjLWJjZWEwMjBiNjE1MlwvZGZzazdwYy0zN2YzN2IwNi03Nzg2LTRkYjItOWYzNC1kNWY3Zjg4ZjAzZDAuanBnIn1dXSwiYXVkIjpbInVybjpzZXJ2aWNlOmZpbGUuZG93bmxvYWQiXX0.Ba7eaTnTHbDiBSYBu4BEoZTfMJHp4-kj85Zf91dufXs [https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/42dd80f9-5ac6-42d5-8ccc-bcea020b6152/dfsk7pc-37f37b06-7786-4db2-9f34-d5f7f88f03d0.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7InBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcLzQyZGQ4MGY5LTVhYzYtNDJkNS04Y2NjLWJjZWEwMjBiNjE1MlwvZGZzazdwYy0zN2YzN2IwNi03Nzg2LTRkYjItOWYzNC1kNWY3Zjg4ZjAzZDAuanBnIn1dXSwiYXVkIjpbInVybjpzZXJ2aWNlOmZpbGUuZG93bmxvYWQiXX0.Ba7eaTnTHbDiBSYBu4BEoZTfMJHp4-kj85Zf91dufXs]
The head had a pulpy pinkish hue, with a rump equipped with four pointed jaws. They did not pause too long to contemplate it, as the worm possessed a everted pharynx that stretched out with the intention of attacking them. Ryuuji leapt to the right and the head followed him, whereupon Natsuki took advantage, and unloaded a new blow on the fleshy pharynx that was completely devoid of the armor of the rest of the body.
There was an explosion of fluids that splashed Natsuki from top to bottom, at which she felt disgusted, but that was all. The head of at least a ton fell and shook in death throes and the same happened to the main body that moved incessantly. They both recoiled in fear that they might be crushed. Fifteen seconds later silence reigned again in the place, only broken by the sound of the drone that had begun to emit a red light in the farthest part of the place.
"I think even through the mask I can smell it. It stinks!"
"What are you complaining about? I'm the one soaked in this crap." She said angrily, and wiped some of the goo off her face, when she felt something hard on her cheek. She took it off and looked at it, hoping it wasn't some other crap, but what she found didn't make her feel any better. With a straight face she turned around and looked at the severed parts of the worm where liquid had started to leak out.
"What is it?" Ryuuji asked.
"A human... tooth," she replied.
Ryuuji activated the special gloves in his backpack and carefully examined the place where the undigested worm waste was filling up. He saw a brown lump peeking out and touched it carefully. Almost at once what must have been part of a scalp stuck in his fingers, and then with a fresh discharge of fluids emerged the half-consumed body of one of the hikers.
"Damn it!" Ryuuji mumbled angrily and turned to look at his partner. "Too late."
"No... these worms store food, they eat fast but their digestion is slow. A human body should be enough sustenance for a long time." Natsuki explained and turned to look through the mist at the distant glow of the drone. She wasn't sure about it, because of the creature's large size, maybe inside it were the other two as well, but at least she hoped it wasn't so.
After reconnecting with the drone's vision, she almost let out a sigh of relief.
***
Moving the bodies of the two survivors took the rescue teams three hours. Because the Neurowire's support signal was not reaching the farthest point. Ryuuji and Natsuki had to climb halfway up the stairs to send and receive communications from the teams on the surface.
Once they were sure that the rescue teams would have to go down with hazmat suits to the site, they proceeded to remove the bodies of the two survivors, who had been placed in a kind of gelatinous mass produced by the worm. Although it kept them alive, at the same time it had to have some kind of muscle relaxant properties to prevent them from moving so that they could escape.
An FRT team was in charge of starting the cleanup of the site. They feared that due to the reproduction system of the worm, corresponding to the new family of annelids, there could be other specimens in the farthest parts of the tunnels.
While they took care of them both, Ryuuji and Natsuki set out on their way back, where they were taken by another FRT team who put them both in decontamination showers.
"Apparently there was an engineering laboratory five kilometers from here more than 80 years ago and they had conducted experiments to study this type of worm. It is likely that one escaped when the facility was closed and moved to the city," Natsuki said.
"Another day at the office..." mused Ryuuji, looking at his naked partner next to him.
Natsuki for her part, with a peaceful look on her face, kept her eyes closed as she let the chemical bath wash away the remains of the sticky film on her head. "It must have been horrible…"
"Who do you mean."
"The one who died. That thing's keeping you alive. He was basically alive when started to be digested."
Ryuuji snorted and nodded crestfallen. "At least we got there to find the other two. If the rescue team had gone down unprotected, it would have been worse."
"Probably."
"How would it have gotten there?"
"I don't think it's worth thinking too hard about. Every year more and more anomalies show up, and not some of them show up in places they shouldn't. At this rate we'd need more agents every year if the rate increases."
[Agents, you may exit,] said a female voice, and a green indicator light appeared over their heads.
They got out and dressed in FRT jumpsuits, along with jackets, and went out once again into the cool of the night, where the moon was already rising above the zenith. They already took it for granted that the clothes they had worn downstairs must have been placed in evidence.
Some of those who were gathered in the place, glanced at Ryuuji in silence, but more than at him, they were looking at the footprints that formed beside him.
Natsuki was not visible to any other human but him. Even to the humans who worked in Nevermore one had to rely on a series of modifications in the cognitive patterns of the Neurowire for her to be seen. She was not a fey. Natsuki was simply a human girl who had the misfortune of being involved in an accident as a teenager. A Dark Event occurred in the same place where she was a student. An event that took the lives of some of her classmates and almost her own.
And yet, Ryuuji, who was at that time a student in the next class, also suffered the side effects of the event. He became the only human who was able to see Natsuki.
To the rest of the people she was invisible. And at the same time everything she interacted with underwent a momentary phase change and became invisible as well. The same happened with sound, for others her voice did not exist, although the sound of her body walking could be heard.
Natsuki had gone from being one of the popular students at high school, to not being seen by anyone. Not even her family or friends. She could communicate with them by other means. But the feeling of having her existence changed overnight by an DE made her shift too much. From being cheerful and smiling girl, she turned to a bitter expression that over time gave way to a somewhat cynical personality.
In fact she didn't even care about being presented in each case. It was all the same to her and she could even say that it annoyed her. That didn't stop Ryuuji from introducing her whenever they had a case. Even though the humans often looked at him as if he had lost his marbles.
That was sometimes a problem in cases, but she felt that in Nevermore at least she had found a place to belong. It didn't make her very happy that Ryuuji had to stay by her side, because she somehow felt that they had become too dependent on each other due to each other's circumstances. She was grateful to him, even if she didn't say it very often, and he had become her best friend, but she didn't want to bother him either.
Ryuuji felt that, but for him it was not an inconvenience. From his point of view, a friend always had to be there.
Natsuki looked at Ryuuji out of the corner of her eye and sighed.
The FRT members had already loaded the bodies of the survivors into the ambulances and closed the doors.
"Come on, I want to ask them if they found anything else," Ryuuji urged her.
Natuski grimaced and followed him shuffling her feets.
"The madman and the invisible girl," she said with a weak smile.
"Did you say something?"
"Nothing..."
A few meters away, Yoshida watched silently as furrows were drawn in the snow beside Ryuuji by some invisible entity.