Доверяй, но проверяй (Trust but Verify) – Ronald Reagan
Operation Grand Slam (D-/+ std::runtime_error)
Heather found herself standing in a circle of light that extended just beyond her outstretched hand. She blinked a few times, trying to adjust her eyes to the darkness that lay beyond the circle of light.
The circle widened and a woman with a flowing golden dress and long brown hair with her eyes covered with gold cloth that shimmered when the light touched it.
“Care to explain why I’m in a psychometric trap?” Heather asked.
“You passed my test when you freed my little friend at Fort Carré. I feel like this is the only way I could talk with you. You can leave now or listen, but I beg you, please listen,” she said. “The choice is yours.”
“Fine I’ll listen,” Heather said and crossed her arms.
“Before we proceed, understand that my insights are bound by the questions you pose. Should my responses falter, seek another inquiry, for my vision is finite,” she said. “I’m Yellow Bird, forged from the essence of DNA Pulp Farms, a lineage rooted in the genes of the Blind Prophet of Tubal. It’s from this ancestral source that I draw my essence, imbued with the wisdom of ages past…”
“I don’t like sounding like Boss Kitty, but short version, please,” Heather said.
The figure paused and her lips twitched.
“I need your word that you will help free me, in return I will reveal all that I know about the Dutchman Mine, what Upper Management, and the Hilltop Hooligans have planned for you and your kin.”
Heather weighed her options carefully. On the one hand, there was the unsettling possibility of walking into a trap, but she couldn't shake the notion that even in deception, there often lay a kernel of truth.
Yellow Bird, at least on the surface, seemed driven by an unyielding desire for freedom, a willingness to go to any lengths to attain it. If her words were sincere, the information she provided could be verified.
Yet, Heather couldn't dismiss the nagging suspicion that the situation was a mix of truth entangled with lies. That option, she mulled over in her head, was a precarious blend of deceit and yearning for freedom. It was a risky path, fraught with uncertainty, where the line between peril and opportunity blurred.
She was reminded of words a friend once told her “Trust but verify,” and was willing to assist. Either way, Heather concluded, psychometry traps or whatever this was, time was meaningless here.
“I am willing to listen to your whole story, provided that your intel checks out of course,” Heather said and uncrossed her arms.
Yellow Bird paused, a faint smile gracing her lips as she began to unravel her past. She recounted her upbringing in an RDC tank, where she was cultivated with only one purpose. Serve as a prophet for the Battle City games. Her only job was to offer insights and predictions to enrich her masters.
With a sweeping gesture Yellow Bird said, “Behold and witness the reality of my origin.”
Heather found herself suspended in mid-air, gazing down upon a vast factory storage hanger filled with a hundred human-sized plexiglass cylinders, each brimming with a viscous, yellowish liquid. Within these cylinders, figures in various stages of development floated copies of the blind prophet.
“Out of 1,000 clones grown, only the top 10%, was to move to the next stage,” she continued. “The rest were recycled.”
Images of teenage girls in silver jumpsuits with numbers on their backs running through different mazes filled Heather’s vision. Each twist and turn proved a gamble for the runner with ever-changing puzzles and traps.
“Failure meant forfeit of life,” she said.
When it came down to the top ten candidates, they had their eyes gouged out and auctioned away.
“Eventually, I was bought by someone from the Brightwood Clan to be used by the Gold Faction to win games,” Yellow Bird said.
Heather pressed her lips together and tapped her foot.
“Every week I’m moved around Gold territory to different locations and guarded by a pack of elite druids named the Thicket Gang,” Yellow Bird said.
“That’s well and good, but how can I find you?” Heather asked with half a laugh.
Yellow Bird paused. Then after a few moments, she bowed and held it.
“A vile of blood has been placed in a hidden compartment in the desk at the captain’s office in the mine. You can use it to track my location,” Yellow Bird answered.
An image of the layout of the gold mine flashed in Heather’s head along with the location of the captain’s office hidden deep within the mine.
“I’ll see what I can do, but I need to discuss this with my family, either way, I’ll go find the vile,” Heather said.
“Thank you,” Yellow Bird said, waving her hand across Heather’s face. “Now I as promised.”
A myriad of images flashed across Heather’s eyes: the exact number of combatants, the strengths and weaknesses of the Hilltop Hooligans, the hidden locations of the magically enhanced N2 landmines, and the assistance given by Upper Management to the Gold Teams.
Yellow Bird bowed, and the darkness disappeared. Heather found herself still wrapped around in the pipe.
> Heather:> CLEAR THE CHANNEL – Don’t deploy to mine. Hold your current position!!1!!
>
> TC:> What’s going on?
>
> Whisper:> Save all questions till get the update. Heather, that’s going on?
>
> Heather:> N2 motion mines - hidden throughout the Dutchman Mine surface zone. Carbon monoxide - deliberately generated by diesel pumps. Upper Management - activated weather control satellites & coordinated w/ Gold Team Druids to block use of spyglass. Upper Mgt provided countermeasures to the zeppelin's stealth system & distributed dossiers on all of us to all Gold teams in the area. Will transfer what I have on the Hilltop Hooligans in a sec. Report complete.
>
> Whisper:> Acknowledged, but once this is over I want to know where they got those N2 Seismic mines. Those are some high-end munitions
>
> TC:> Got it..agreed i'll help!
>
> Indigo:> Ack.
>
> Tauru:> Fuckin’ hell…acknowledged
>
> Heather:> I recommend we retreat till we can get an Officiator to address the cheating
>
> Whisper:> Negative, everyone hold your positions till we can come up with something
“Damit, I need to do something before Whisper gets everyone killed,” Heather thought. “They may know everything on us, but they won’t know what’s coming next. I knew something this was going to happen.”
She activated her magic and druidic skill tree on her character menu. A single slot was free for animal form, and she scrolled down till she found the little accessed insect selection. She continued to scroll through the twenty pages of data she collected on known insects.
“I told Boss Kitty not to antagonize Upper Management, but did she listen? Noooo,” Heather thought as she selected on her internal screen. “Good thing I leave options open for situations like this.”
Her body flattened and shrank down. Hundreds of tiny legs sprouted from her sides, and razor-thin antennae sprang from her head. Her body turned to a shiny black with orange stripes running down her sides. Once her transformation was complete, she skittered up the drainage pipe.
“If I’m going to purge the mine of Gold, I’m going to require a bit of assistance.”
Heather exited the hole and skittered across the tunnel floor taking a moment to calibrate the map. From speaking with other druids and her own experience, she knew that while in insect form, her skills would be severely limited, including Witch Sight. Indeed, she was also weaker in this form.
Simply being stepped on could land her in purgatory for the next five days.
The trade-off was that she could give up one animal slot to obtain seven insect slots. In situations like this, she thought as she detected warmth 20 meters away, the more options she had to counter the enemy’s plan, the better.
“The darkness of the cave and limited visibility of the rebreather masks should prevent Go-home Gold from spotting me,” Heather thought. “Or at least I hope.”
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
She waited by a bend in the tunnel, her antenna detecting vibrations in the air from the grunts and heavy breathing of effort as two combatants heaved a hefty crate past her. Their footsteps echoed heavily in the confined space. The lights on their head bobbed as they walked.
“We need to book it, Vole,” one of the guys said as he tapped his ear. “Captain is about to activate the Cerberus Protocol.”
“Fuck this shit, Weasel, let’s drop this damned box, it’s getting heavy,” Vole said dropping his end of the crate.
Heather slipped out from her hiding place and ran up the leg of the closest target. She slipped under Weasel’s belt and waited near his stomach.
When Weasel dropped the end of his box, Heather spat numbing acid on his belly button. Then she pressed her head closer as the mandibles ripped open Heather pushed her way inside. The feet in the back sealed up the hole.
She made her way into his stomach by chewing on the soft flesh. Entering the hallowed space, Heather began to lay eggs.
“If Yellow Bird's info is correct, they’re returning to the second-in-command, Duckie,” Heather thought as she exited his stomach. “Duckie’s a detection mage, and I’ll stick out like a floodlight in the middle of a desert at midnight.”
Climbing up his spine, Weasel stopped to scratch his back. She spat out more nerve paralytic toxin as she stopped at the base of his skull. Tendrils moved out of the mouth and began to reroute his nerve endings to her control. Her children began to hatch and grow.
Heather now had complete control of her victim. She made Weasel stop and tap Vole on the back who was busy unlatching the locks on the crate.
“What…I’m workin’ here,” Vole said.
She made Weasel lift his mask and an orange band centipede stuck its head out of his mouth. Weasel tapped him on the shoulder with more force.
“I told you I’m workin’, what the fuck do you…” Vole asked as he turned around.
Weasel grabbed the rebreather mask and yanked it over Vole’s face. Then punched him in the diaphragm, which caused him to gasp for air. His eyes watered and his face turned green from suddenly inhaling the toxic fumes. The centipede leaped from Weasel and into Vole’s mouth. He coughed and gagged as the insect crawled into his stomach.
Vole fell to the ground and clutched his throat. It devoured his internal organs and once it was full, it began to lay eggs and access Vole’s central nervous system.
More babies crawled out of Vole and Weasel’s mouth and wrapped around their arms and legs.
“I need to swap back to my original form, I’m a bit too vulnerable here,” Heather thought and crawled out of Weasel.
On the ground, she transformed back to her human form. Her caprice shredded away as bones and muscle fiber began to grow.
“I don’t have time to research a spell or pop off a ritual to breathe this gas, I’m going to need something quicker,” she thought and crossed her arms over her chest.
She coughed and hacked as she mumbled the words, “Wild Mutation!”
After a moment she was able to regain her breath. She inhaled deeply and then noticed that her hands and arms had a purple-tinged hue. She snapped up the headlamp from Vole and checked the mirror. Her eyes had a violet sheen to them.
“Could have been worse, I guess,” she said. “Now let’s see what’s in the box.”
She finished unlatching the side locks and opened the container. Inside she found a stack of brick-like material and a computer device with an attached antenna. She pulled out her phone and snapped a few pictures of the contents.
> Heather:> I’m uploading some pics of something I found in a crate, can someone ID this for me, plz?
>
> IMG.FX
>
> TC:> Looks like PyroMag CO2 Charges, aka Flash Crackers, we use it to detonate CO2 pockets. Why?
>
> Heather:> The enemy is putting them around sections of the mine. I’ll see what I can do to clear them out before y’all arrive
>
> Whisper:> Understood
Heather flicked her hair behind her head and adjusted her glasses.
“Now let’s see about clearing out the rest of the mine before the others show up,” she said to Vole and Weasel.
They stood silently, arms hanging limp to their side.
***