Sam and Anya arrived at the Operation Center just after classes for new recruits began. The dirt yard was lined with kids and adults of ages ranging from fourteen to mid thirties. It looked like Martin (#17) was the instructor for the day. They were running endurance drills. Groups of two ran around the facility with weighted backpacks on. They carried an additional forty pound crate between them.
“Yuck, endurance training.” Anya faked a gag, looking at the group. “First few months of endurance are rough.”
“If my memory serves me right, I believe you have the record for slowest lap ever run in the history of Credence.” Sam said with a hand on his chin.
“Yeah? And you have the record for most times throwing up in a single practice.” Anya shot back.
Sam winced. “Ouch. You didn’t have to remind me about that.”
“It’s what I do best.” Anya said.
They entered the large hangar-like building through a door on the side. A long hallway with wooden doors on either side stretched out in front of them for a couple hundred feet. Most of the rooms were either classrooms or storage. Some of the rooms towards the end of the hall had been fitted into space for sleeping. Smaller rooms filled to the brim with bunk beds and trainees.
Sam had flashbacks to his times spent living on base every time he entered the building. Memories of cold nights spent staring at the underside of a bunk, unable to sleep. Training was difficult. The first real time he had spent away from his family and he got to do it in a place where people were scared he’d eat them or something if they looked at him the wrong way. It was a lonely experience until Anya showed up. She joined about a week late due to her family going through introduction procedures for Credence.
They passed a classroom with a couple trainees sitting at desks. Anya pointed to a crack going down the length of the wooden door. “Hey, you remember the day that happened?”
Sam chuckled, “I remember the day you threw me across a room for pulling a chair out from under you if that’s what you mean?” He gave her a sly look with a lopsided grin rising up the left side of his face. “I’m still surprised that the whole thing didn’t just shatter along with the glass.”
“Yeah. . . I might have overdone it a tad on that one.” Anya chuckled.
They turned a corner into a much shorter hallway with metal double doors at the end. A sign above them read “Pre-Operation Equipment and Intelligence.” Two guards were stationed to either side of the doors. Unlike the guards out at the front gate, these two were silent and at attention. They were dressed in tactical gear with rifles hanging in front of them. They noticed Sam and Anya’s approach with a nod. The one to the left of the doors turned around and pulled them open.
Anya stopped short of the door. “Ready Sam?” Anya asked.
“No. You?” He sighed.
She took a deep breath. “Of course not,” then stepped forward.
The remaining guard stood their ground but gave them a grave look and mouthed the words ‘Good luck.’ Anya patted his shoulder as they went by. “Thanks Tom, I’m sure we're gonna need it.”
The Intel room was a large, mostly open room. Fold out tables along the right edge held a mess of computers and paperwork. Caged lockers filled with all sorts of firearms and ammunition lined the back wall. Clothes racks with a variety of uniforms covered the left side wall. Hazmat suits, nightvision, jumpers, it was all there.
Four tables had been pushed together in the center of the room to make a large makeshift planning table. Map after map had been placed on the table, a stack of notebooks and folders crafted a leaning tower of paper that threatened to cover the ground with months worth of surveillance reports. Ten people surrounded it in varying states of cooperation. Some sat back barely listening while others leaned forward, eyes glued to the central map. In the center of it all was 13. She was looking over the central map, hands down on the table head bowed. Her dark brown and gray hair pushed to one side, dangling over the table. The room went silent as she looked up at Sam and Anya.
13 straightened her back and crossed her arms. She didn’t say anything, only stared the two of them down as they found their seats opposite of her. Sam could feel every vein in his body grow cold under her icy stare. Anya seemed to feel the same way judging by the way her face lost some color. If they didn’t hear it now they were definitely going to get an ear full after the meeting. Hopefully not with everybody watching this time.
“Now that everyone is here, let's get started.” 13 said, then pulled a map out from under a few others. It showed the area around and leading up to Reset Rock. A small industrial complex near a cliff edge. “This is ground zero.”
10 or Trent as Sam knew him, sat forward and spoke. “Ground zero? What do you mean, ground zero? What happened?”
13 leaned back looking down at Sam. “That’s what Sam is here to tell us about today.” The entire room turned to look at him. Sam returned the stares with a look he hoped conveyed confidence. Anticipation filled each one of their faces. Looking around he began to notice something out of the ordinary. Everyone gathered here was from the older generation of Scavs. Not only that but they were all Pulsers, all nine of them. The first wave of Pulsers. The ones that used numbers instead of names. 1, 3, 5, 6, 8, and 9-13. There was something far beyond Sam’s knowledge going on here. After meeting the gaze of each one of them he finally looked to 13. She stared down her nose at him for a moment, her brow furrowed before giving him a slight nod. With that, Sam stood up.
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His gaze found Anya’s eyes and she gave him a nod. He didn’t realize how much he was just staring until then. He cleared his throat and began. “As you all may already know, I got pulsed about a week ago.”
“Yeah, botched a simple scouting mission, we all heard about it.” A tall, lengthy guy in his late fifties spoke up. 9 or Flint. He was always giving anyone younger than him a hard time, it didn't matter if they were younger by years or days. A couple of the other guys chuckled at the outburst.
Sam sighed and opened his mouth to respond but 13 beat him to it. “Shut up Flint.” Stunned by the response, Flint looked towards 13 then back to Sam before sitting back in his seat. Sam was stunned as well. 13 never used names when talking to a Pulser. “There’s a good reason he failed his run.” She continued. “Let him say his piece.” Everyone else at the table seemed to get the memo. Sam looked around at everyone gathered, there was total concentration now. It would seem if 13 thought it this important than everyone else did now too.
“As I was saying.” Sam sputtered. “I can’t remember why but I had to cut my run short. It’s pretty spotty leading up to the pulse, I’m sure you all can relate.” Sam reached across the table and pulled the map 13 had prepared out to the center so everyone could see. He pointed roughly east of Reset Rock then continued. “Right about here is where my pulse memory begins. I was running from something when a tree was lobbed at me and sent a shard of wood into my chest. I made it just short of the reset when it grabbed me and finished me off.” Sam looked up at 13.
“Go ahead and tell them what you told me 29.” She said.
“It was a massive beast, at least twenty feet tall. All of its limbs were unnaturally long and flexible. Black scales covered its body along with a snake-like, arrow shaped head. It gave off some sort of noise canceling aura. It had massive claws and even bigger tusks. And its eyes-” He cut off. It wasn’t until just now that he realized what made him so unsettled when he thought of the eyes of that monster. “It’s- it’s eyes were-” He struggled to get the words out. He found himself unable to speak louder than a whisper. “Human.”
The room was dead silent. Anya shifted in her chair visibly uneasy after hearing the creature's description again. The squeak her chair made sliced through the silent room and lingered with an echo. Wide eyes stared at Sam from all directions. Mouths held half agape. He knew it was like nothing he had ever heard of but he didn’t know it would result in this sort of response.
13, for the first time all meeting, sat down in their chair with a thud. Everyone else looked around at the others before all finding their way to 13. 6, Martha, an older woman with buzzed hair and a thick Appalachian accent was the first to speak. “How?” She looked towards 13 with desperation in her eyes.
13 sighed and leaned forward putting her forearms onto the table. “I don’t know.”
Flint suddenly shot up from his seat and slammed a fist down onto the table. “That's impossible!” The plastic buckled slightly causing a tremor to resonate to the rest of the table. Pens and pencils popped up into the air, piles of paper shifted and toppled over. “We killed that thing! It. Is. Dead!”
“Surely you are mistaking what you saw for something else?” Trent said. He was softer with his words more calculated than Flint.
“No. It is what you think it is.” 13 said. “There is no mistaking that beast with something else.”
“It could have been a shifter, no? Taking the form of something it saw a long time ago?” Martha said.
“Don't be ridiculous, you know shifters can only do illusions, Martha.” 13 said dryly.
“Well then the kid saw wrong!” Flint shouted. “Simple as that.”
“Yeah!” Ren, a leaner middle aged man with gray on his temples, said. “That thing is dead! No question about it. We put it down ourselves!”
The room erupted into a mess of expletives and frantic gestures. People erupted from their chairs sending them flying backwards. The leaning stack of loose papers toppled to the table and subsequently the floor as well.
Sam took a step back from the table to allow the scene to play out. He caught Anya’s eyes and they shared a puzzled yet concerned look. Neither of them knew exactly what was going on. There was obviously something more to the creature Sam had encountered. What that was though, was a complete mystery to them. Simultaneously they looked towards the only true point of reason they knew they had in the room.
13 stood there, head bowed looking down towards the table. Sam couldn’t tell but he thought her eyes were closed. She had one hand on the table, the other was rubbing her forehead. She stayed like that for a few moments, seemingly collecting herself for whatever came next. Sam prepared himself for what he knew was inevitable.
13 slammed a fist down into the table with speed faster than Sam had seen her use in a long time. It shattered in half where her fist connected. Shards of plastic flew into the air as the metal legs of the table screeched as they folded in on themselves. “Quite!” She screamed, still not looking up from the now destroyed table. Bright blue pulses of energy shot through her arteries. Flashes of blue shown through her coat at her wrists and the collar of her shirt. A slight bit of steam rose from the hand that had destroyed the table. A few drops of blue blood trickled down her palm before dripping to the floor.
The rest of the room went silent. All heads turned to the sight of 13 huffing in and out with an outstretched arm. The room stayed that way for what felt like minutes to Sam. Everyone stiff with shock, not knowing what they should be doing. One last drop of blue blood fell to the shattered table at 13’s feet, leaving a crater of blue on a map of a nearby industrial plant.
13 took a breath and straightened their back. “Now that we all have that out of our system, I suggest we get back to the reason I have gathered us all here in the first place.”
The rest of the room slowly churned back to life. Murmurs drifted across the table but everyone found their seats and settled back down for the most part. A few of the old Pulsers still looked rattled. They were twitchy. Rubbing hands on knees and hand through hair. Sam had never seen most, no, none of them ever this anxious. He looked at Anya once more. She looked equally as anxious looking around the room at the rest of the oldtimers who Sam might dare say look scared.
“I trust 29’s report to be true.” 13 continued. “Therefore you all know what that means.”
“It’s back.” 11 whispered. She was a short stocky woman with buzzed blonde hair. She rarely spent time within Credence, preferring to scout the surrounding area as well as protect routes to nearby outposts and supply dumps.
“Yes.” 13 stated. “The Jabberwocky is back.”