The skimmer slid smoothly across the Surf. Tiny mechanical limbs dangled below, pushing and kicking off of the dense canopy that formed the top of the Okocea. Joe sat on the edge of the military craft, letting his feet rock back into the Expedition Force logo that was stamped on the side of the thing.
An anchor in the old style, from back before the real seas were choked with plant life, with chains weaving a big circle around it. A smattering of dents put in the center of it where Joe had been sitting for hours, idly kicking it.
He looked over the edge, watching the flowering tops of the plants as they passed. The Okocea was wildly diverse ecosystem. The top of the surf was hundreds of different colors and textures, bleeding together and melding with the shifting winds.
Joe grabbed a railing as the skimmer shifted, taking the sloping curve of the tree down to the shallow tops of the Reef. He waited for it to even out, then hoisted himself up. He snapped closed a manila folder he’d been reading out of, then dusted off the pollen and dust that had been kicking up on him for hours as he sat.
He smacked the dark green leathers, watching the clouds puff off as he walked toward the cabin. It was hardly a cabin at all, if he was being honest. Most of these skimmers were stylized after boats and other watercraft, but were just really poor facsimiles of them. The thin aluminum frame wrapped around, dented and warped by time. Dirty glass panes that rattled in their frames. All that was inside was the control panel and a desk with files on it.
Joe saw Buff sitting there, scanning through more files. Possible aliases, known locations where their prey frequented. He blinked the thought away, Target not prey. He felt the hiss of his instinct rattle in the back of his head. He took a breath, picturing stone walls encompassing and blocking off the instinct. It took time and practice, but that was all you did the first year of your training; Practice control.
Buff’s low voice snapped him back.
“We’re only another hour or so from the town they were last spotted at.”
He said, not even looking up at Joe. Which was fine as far as he was concerned. Buff may be his partner, but he still didn’t like looking him in the eye. Those pink tinged eyes were frankly just terrifying.
“What town is it? We’re not near anything big or important” Joe squinted out the dirty windshield of the boat at the mountains in the distance. This was still low land territory. Nothing like the high mountains up north with their massive walled cities and huge E.F. population.
Buff grabbed a file off the top and tossed it to Joe.
“Rootsaw, lowland town with a big harvest population. One of the only sectors where Hanur Moss grows in abundance” Joe read it off in a robotic monotone.
“If the pattern holds they’ll do something in this sector to destabilize more of the infrastructure set up. We can’t get medicines and keep people healthy it becomes a lot easier to recruit to the ‘good guys’ who do” Buff said, sweeping his long arms across the table to gather the files up.
He stood up, his massive height nearly making him duck in the cabin. He wore the same dark green color as Joe did, but where Joe was wearing scout leathers, Buff wore a doctor’s coat. He slid the files inside the long coat and walked over to the controls. He wasn’t facing Joe when he asked.
“When we find Calam. Let me take them out.” Buff’s voice was calm, but it made the hair on Joe’s arms raise. He felt a slight push in his mind. The instinct he had put behind walls raged, calling for blood.
“I have no desire to risk my life getting in your way, don’t worry” Joe said. They sat in silence for most of the ride in to town. Joe could feel Buff stewing in anger. He didn’t know the full details of what went down back at that research facility but he wasn’t going to pry.
When they pulled up to the little town, Joe was pleasantly surprised at what he saw. Long docks reached out into the shoreline, grooved edges allowing the skimmers to slide in and be taken out without having to ride them down the wave. He counted at least thirty crawler frames that were fully extended and connected up here, a lean over the edge showing more of them still setting up. This place would rival some of the lowland cities with this kind of business.
The people bustling about stopped when they saw the skimmer come in over the Reef. Joe guessed that was pretty uncommon on the Shoreline. Most transit via skimmer stayed in the Shoreline for safety reasons.
As they docked, Buff slid the protective goggles on and then stood at attention as the local E.F. came out to greet them. Joe stood off behind and slightly to the side. Buff was the communicator between the two of them, which was a considerably low bar. The small group of people in front saluted, a couple in the back stiffening when they saw the number of coils stitched into their uniforms.
They paled when they saw the four that sat above Joe’s anchor, then their eyes flicked over to the five that sat above Buff’s and they turned a nice sickly shade of green. Most of these new kids had gotten their anchor and taken their leave, going to guard small towns where they could forget about the unhinged maniacs that had decided to go into higher ranks of service.
Maniacs like the two standing before them.
“We’re in pursuit of a suspicious individual, we need to talk to whoever is in charge of root workers, possibly talk to any R2’s who might have seen something recently” Buff was brief, and Joe felt the slightest tinge of a push on his mind. He knew these people could never detect it and only bit his tongue at Buff’s abuse of power.
The leader, a young looking woman with a fresh second coil turned and snapped orders before waving for them to follow.
“You’ll be wanting to talk to Cornelius, he’s the foreman for the operations out here and he’s actually got an R2 out in the Reef right now” she said.
Buff and Joe shared a look. If their prey- no if their target was in the area then being in the Reef is the worst possible idea. They hurried to a crawler that sat at the edge overlooking the town proper. It was worn down and mostly composed of trailers and a tent city that was still expanding on the edges.
The crawler had a specialized frame that had a huge section of the middle removed, replaced with hanging elevators. The platforms didn’t budge when the local team stepped on, but the cables whined when Buff stepped onto the platform. He was easily a foot taller than anyone else present and broad chested. He didn’t acknowledge the movement of the platform in the slightest, only took his place and looked forward.
When Joe took a step on, the platform bobbed slightly, and the locals looked at him with confusion and horror. He was shorter than most of them, with a thin wiry build. There’s no way he should have been heavy enough to cause such a disturbance. Joe at the very least had the good sense to look ashamed. He gave a tight lipped smile and bowed his head, looking down as the platform descended.
……
Cornelius was in the relay station when the E.F. came knocking. He’d been looking into a weird signal he got from Kad, confused by it. He’d gotten one signal, way off check in time, and then some kind of glitch in the system. The box had pinged back and rattled off a hundred signals before stopping. He just looked at the feed of paper that had been spit out and sighed.
Kad had been hungover when he went in today, the idiot had probably knocked the box off his belt and crushed the thing. He was a good worker and had a solid track record for actually hauling in finds, but he was a bit of a flake. Reliable isn’t exactly the word you use for someone who shows up to work an hour late and drunk a third of the time.
He noted the check-in buzz at an odd time and stepped out to smoke. He’d just lit it when he saw the squad moving toward him, a man actually taller than Cornelius himself leading the group. He saw the local leader, the skinny girl with the blonde hair. By the way she looked at the two in front, she wasn’t in charge right now. If Cornelius knew one thing, it was that higher ups in the E.F. always meant trouble.
“Fuckin E.F. always stirrin’ shit up” he grumbled, dropping the cigarette on the ground and stamping it out as he walked to meet them. He shook hands with the tall fella heading the pack, giving an odd glance at his doctor’s uniform and thick goggles with darkened lenses.
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“Cornelius Boone, Foreman”
“Michael Buffard, Diver Captain. Call me Buff” Cornelius was surprised by his voice. It was low and soft, but every word felt like it’d been whispered in his ear. The hair on the back of his neck stood up. The only word he could think of was-
“Creepy” he said, immediately going pale. A short guy standing off to the side in scout leathers almost choked on a laugh. The rest of them looked to the guy in front warily. Why had he said that out loud? It was like the word slipped out before he knew what word it was even going to be.
Buff smirked at him and waved off the apology that he was trying to form
“It happens more than you’d think, it isn’t your fault” he said, clearly amused. He looked at Cornelius seriously and continued. “We’re looking for and individual who poses a significant risk to the entire sector, and our intelligence suggests he’s in the area.” He waved as he walked toward the relay station. “Why is there an R2 out there right now, the entire sector got orders to cease operations out in the Reef until further notice?”
Cornelius’ head snapped up, and he sped up as he walked toward the relay station.
“I got orders that a specific route was supposed to be run today. I sent him out like I was supposed to.” He said. The two lead men locked eyes and moved into the station, going for the list of routes.
“What route did he take, and how long has he been gone?” The shorter one said
“Route G, on the edge of our sector. He’s been gone since about 10am, but he was checking in regularly” Cornelius’ eyes widened. “He checked in off schedule about 20 minutes ago, then his box glitched out, pinged a hundred times before it stopped”
The blonde girl from the E.F. was organizing and giving orders to her subordinates, having them fan out and evacuate the workers who were still milling about. The two from out of town blitzed out of the building, heading directly toward route G. Cornelius sprinted after them. If one of his men was in danger out there, it was his responsibility to bring them back safe. The two stopped and looked at him.
“Go back and check on your people, you can’t tag along on this one”
“He’s my man, bogus orders or not I’M the one who sent him out there, not you”
The tall one stood there, still as a statue. The short one shook his head.
“You don’t get it, the kind of person we’re following is dangerous”
Cornelius didn’t respond, instead kept trying to walk past them toward the route Kad had left on. Buff put a hand out to stop him and pulled the thick goggles off his head. Cornelius went to stare him in the eyes and-
Something happened, he was sure of it. Almost sure the nice man had said something to him.
He was right, whatever he’d said, and Cornelius needed to relax. This wasn’t something to get so worked up about. He walked back, almost getting to the edge of the worker camp where the other E.F. people were organizing everyone to evacuate when he looked back confused.
What just happened?
“That wasn’t necessary, you’re doing it too much” Joe said as they ran through the shoreline. He hated when Buff pushed people that hard. He’d watched as the foreman’s eyes had just gone glassy and passive, and he just turned around walked off with no trouble.
“I was forced to test it at full power multiple times, nobody could detect any kind of negative side effect” Buff was speaking clinically now, the emotion completely gone from his voice.
Joe looked up and whistled for Buff to stop. A huge cloud of dust was wafting its way over them. He could taste it in the air, rot and decay.
“You need to pinpoint them now, somethings gone down, we’re out of time”
Buff looked at him fully this time, showing the bright pink tone in his eyes that surrounded the deep brown pools of his irises. There was nothing behind them. Buff was fully giving himself over to the instinct as he called it forth.
Joe worked his jaw, feeling his ears pop as the pressure built around them. He braced himself for the impact when he actually released it. There was a reason that he was partnered with this monster when he was a full coil above him in rank. He was the only one who could tolerate being this close to him when he let loose.
The pulse kicked out from Buff, widening and blasting through the terrain around them. Dirt kicked up in whirlwinds on the ground, branches and stalks snapped under the pressure. The plants couldn’t experience the worst part of it though. Joe felt the pressure in his eyes as emotion flooded him. It was terror. Primal and unfiltered terror that was trying to claw through every part of him faster than you could blink.
Joe grit his teeth so hard they felt like they were gonna crack. It was unsettling just how strong Buff was, but it was over, and Buff had started moving before he’d even had a second to breathe.
Buff was moving like a bullet through the shoreline, only slowing when he got to the Reef long enough to get up on the lower canopy so he could run along the branches. Even he didn’t want to charge straight through thousands of feet of brambles.
Joe kept up, barely. His instinct was slamming against the barrier in his mind, whispering that he could move even faster than Buff if he let it out. He clamped down tighter on it. One of them had to keep a cool head when there was a civilian’s life on the line.
It took them twenty minutes to hit the clearing where something had gone down. Trees were shattered into wood chips, a hundred yards of brambles and vines were just dead, like the life had been sucked out of them. Pools of blood and sweat on the ground.
He wracked his brain. Think, why would it be like this? The guy out here is just an R2, he couldn’t put up any kind of fair fight, and no way would Calam be that weak already.
Was he testing him? Was this a recruitment mission? A thousand thoughts ran through his head as they moved along a trail of destruction. Buff stopped at a massive body laying unmoving on the forest floor. A matal with its head caved in, a massive pile of dead vines, and a hole in the brambles where something had been thrown.
They almost passed it up until Joe heard something off in the brambles. He whistled, and Buff stopped and looked at him with the same vacant expression in his eyes. Buff turned and sprinted off, following the trail of destruction. Joe cursed but didn’t follow. He leaned in closer to figure out what it was exactly he was hearing. He pulled a machete out and started hacking through the bramble toward the sound. That’s when he heard it.
Laughter.
Buff knew he shouldn’t leave Joe behind, but he could smell that fucker running. He tasted his fear. His rational brain was riding shotgun by now, as he let the instinct fully take over. He hit a small clearing only seconds later, a splintered crate sat next to a pond that looked like a festered wound.
Black veins ran from the pond into the earth like rot. It didn’t belong here. He took a quick look at the pond, seeing only congealed water and slime. He didn’t have time to process it. He smelled blood.
The trail led out towards the edge of a cliff. Buff sniffed the air. Clever, set up your testing grounds right next to a close edge of the Open Waters. He stood there a moment, scanning the valley below. There in the distance he saw them. Calam was standing on the edge of a branch far out.
It took the enhanced vision and perceptive nature of his instinct to even catch a glimpse in the dim light. Calam looked back with a weary expression, and locked eyes with Buff.
The instinct took over and Buff felt himself sitting in the passenger seat, watching the events unfold. His body never moved. He felt a whine from the surroundings as the air pressure built. It increased until Buff felt like he could feel the weight of what his mind was holding. When it let go it didn’t simply pop like the bubble bursts he was used to, it was a lance of pure force that shot out, detonating a section of the ground on the forest floor a few hundred feet from Calam.
The bioluminescent bacteria that lived in the dirt out there flared, and a spray of green light lit up the darkness. When it faded, Calam was gone. All that was left was a rocking headache, and blood cascading down from Buff’s eyebrow.
He made his way back to Joe, finding him with a mangled body laid out on the ground next to the Matal. Legs shattered in multiple places. Lacerations to the bone all over the right side of his body. The muscle in one arm was sheared off so badly the damn thing was barely still on. Joe was applying gels to stop bleeding, wrapping limbs as fast as he was capable. He looked up at Buff and frowned.
“I felt that from here, jackass, did you at least leave a body?”
“I missed, we need to save him. He might know something” the words were there but they felt hollow. Whatever he’d managed to do with his instinct, it left him feeling weakened.
Joe glanced up at his words but chose to ignore the first half of what he said.“I’m trying, I don’t know what’s wrong with this kid but he’s freakishly durable”
“Durable?” Buff raised an eyebrow as he knelt down. Nothing like medicine to make him snap out of it.
“He was laughing when I found him”
Buff’s eyebrows screwed together, and he pulled on that connection again, using his instinct to put pressure down across some of the more dangerous looking wounds. He put his hand over Kad and did his best to be gentle as he pushed with it, sending a probing pulse through his body.
“Shit, he’s dying.”
“That bad? He’s cut to shit but I’ve seen worse”
“I think he got punched or something, his ribs are shattered and his organs are punctured, he’s gonna bleed out before we could even get him out of here.”
Joe sat back, putting his hands on his head. “Fuck, nothing we can do? The kid survived an encounter with Pilgrim for gods’ sake. He has information we need”
Buff sat there for a second, watching the breathing of this poor mangled kid get worse. He glanced at Joe, then nodded over at the Matal. “There’s something we can do right now” his stare was severe, even regretful.
Joe didn’t speak right away, looking at the kid lying there. “He’ll never forgive us. I wouldn’t forgive us”
“He can hate us when he wakes up, we need to do something”
“We don’t even know his alignments, we could leave him in an excruciating amount of pain for the rest of his life”
“Joe, that’s the deal he’s already got” Buff pulled out a medical kit from his supplies. “Make the call” he said.
Joe stared at the body of the boy, watching laborious breaths be dragged in. He was a fighter, he’d survived this long, and clearly Matal himself found the kid interesting if he was just going to leave this nice viable body out here.
“Fuck it, let’s do this” He rolled up his sleeves and prepared to assist in the procedure. A forest floor wasn’t the ideal location but they didn’t have that many options right now. He chuckled.
“What?”
“Sofia” Joe said like it was the most obvious thing in the world
“What about Her?”
“She’s gonna kick the shit out of us for this”