Point of Documentation: Marshall, Phoenix 11
Marshall crashed through the ajar door as the entire building shook with the thunderous reverberations of something slamming into the floors above. He had to be underground as the walls didn’t moan or complain about the added stress of force. Instead, small bits of dust and ceiling material rained down on his head as Marshall moved into the hall. The hall beyond contained dozens of doors that lined each wall. Some of them were more spaced out then others, but nothing major was different between the doors from a first, cursory look.
A man rested against the wall across from the door. He seemed to have lost his footing between the shaking and not catching himself when the door slammed into his back. Marshall drew the pistol he looted from the bodies inside and aimed it at the man. “Move and I shoot. I want to know how to get–” His words ended abruptly when the man started to go for his rifle. A squeezed trigger and the conversation was now rendered far from possible. This caused Marshall to make a ‘tss’ sound and lower the pistol.
The imp-turned-insect floated out of the door and rested on Marshall’s shoulder. “Odd how the weakest members of a species gather around even weaker members who have louder voices.” The words didn’t sound malevolent, just matter-of-fact. Like it was reading off a script or old lecture it knew of. “So what’s the plan now, oddity? Going to kill everyone and flee?” Now that sentence had some snide to it that Marshall didn’t quite care for.
“No, I have something calling out to me I need to find. That and my damn gun and suit. I have a suspicion they’re all in the same place, but how to get down further…” His eyes wandered the length of the hall until he noticed a small sign hanging above one of the farther doors at the end of the hall. A stairway sign? Well that makes things a bit easier. Marshall moved down towards the door, giving passing looks into the doors along the hallway as he passed.
It looked as if some of the rooms had their small windows closed up. The rest were open, and Marshall wished that they had at least closed them to let whoever was still resting inside to enjoy a peaceful death. Because there was no way in hell whatever was in those rooms were still alive. How did something like this exist in a civilized town? The sheer brutality shown by some of these people were so animalistic that it baffled Marshall on a base level of intelligence. He would have many questions about this when he got out, and he planned on directing all of them to whoever the hell was in charge here.
As Marshall got to the stairwell, he heard a groan from the door across from the stair’s own exit. His head turned and his eyes fell upon a door with a closed slat. Stepping up to the door, he laid his ear against it. A low moan escaped the room, then a gruff, pleading “.. help..” followed. Marshall leaned back and moved the slat to the side. He almost choked on the breath he took in as he looked in the room.
A torture room had been set up with a man in a leaned-back operating chair in the center. The man was pale of complexion, a small beard that had gone scraggly days ago by the looks of it, and so many incisions across his arms that it looked like someone had turned him into what a cheesegrater should look like rather than the result of using one. Another thing to note was that the man was blindfolded; a gag having also fallen down to his neck letting him speak once more. The most damning thing that made Marshall stop and be frozen in place was that the man was wearing, almost down to the smallest details, the same uniform as him.
Marshall tried the door only to find it locked. He stepped back and kicked it a couple of times right next to the lock’s housing. Not budging; Marshall raised his pistol up and shot the lock a couple of times until he heard the click to indicate it was now empty. That wouldn’t unlock it, but it would weaken the lock enough to break it off with a good kick. Two more kicks later and he was in.
With barely any pause Marshall rushed into the room. The man raised his head towards where the door was and croaked. It was like the words were impossible to form the way he was right now. Unfortunately, Marshall had absolutely nothing to help the man in that regard. The man looked like a member of his wing, but one that he thought had died weeks ago in that ill-fated mission that had annihilated his wing and stranded him here. With a lump in his throat, Marshall spoke. “Delton?” came the hesitant word from his lips.
The man ‘looked’ over. Well, it was hard to say that he looked, and more so that he moved his head slightly to the side as if to side-eye him. “... rescue? Or, disposal?” The man croaked out the words like they were his last. It made Marshall nearly panic, thinking the man was on the way out. No, he WAS on the way out. This amount of damage, bleeding… it was more than a couple dressings could help. Unless he got a proper doctor…
“Rescue. Kind of. It’s Marshall, do you remember your designation?” He said this hurriedly while unstrapping him from the nightmare-fuel dentist chair. He knew this had to be Delton, but making everything crystal clear would be the most efficient first step.
Delton seemed to pick up on this and spoke. “Phoenix 12. Interception duty. Covering your ass, if you remember… Marshall?” The last part was asked more as a question, as if he wasn’t all too sure that it was true.
“Bullseye. Marshall, Phoenix 11. How in the Great Expanse did you survive that slaughter and get here of all places?” The last of the straps fell away as he spoke this and the man started to get up off the chair. He nearly had it, but fell as he put weight on his left leg and Marshall had to catch him.
Letting out a small curse that sounded more like angry hissing, Delton leaned on Marshall as if he couldn’t even support his own weight. “Hit early…” The man coughed, some blood coming up as a clotted mess of old coagulation. “Hit early on in the fight. I drifted off course towards the Wall. Some bandit picked me up and sold me to some woman who was looking for Outlanders. I’m sorry Marshall… I told her everything. The crash, the details of our Wing, who I was. I just didn’t know where the final fight happened and where those wrecks were at.” His voice became more choked, as if he was about to cry. “They planned to keep me around if you didn’t talk. Called me a ‘potential pressure point’ for you. So they took my eyes and arm muscles so I couldn’t hold a weapon again or see to fight. They were working on my legs next… but the woman, Sinclair, came and had them leave for something.”
Marshall hauled him out of the room as Delton spoke. A unique feeling of tightness rose in his chest that he didn’t quite recognize. It was a burning feeling that made his hands clench and mouth go dry. They had tortured another of his number, and he had been dozens of feet away and knew nothing. Nothing! Now one of his squadmates was barely alive in his arms, blind, and couldn't defend himself even if he wanted to.
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
On that note: Marshall seemed to somehow be able to nearly haul Delton along with nearly no input or pressure on Delton’s part. Like he was carrying the man with one arm. It felt so strange to Marshall, and must have tipped off the insect that still rested on his other shoulder. It spoke to him in his mind once more, seeming to want a private chat. Marshall felt thankful for that fact.
“Stop staring at your side like it’s something not belonging to you.” A chide voice came across from Tethel and made Marshall blush slightly. Yeah, he had absolutely been looking at his arm like it was an alien growth with far more strength than it should have. “If you’re wondering why you’re stronger, you can blame that ‘Awakening’ you did days ago. Honestly, it would have been so much easier if you would have just let me do all this and gotten blessed by a Greater Being.” Marshall could feel the vocal head-shake that Tethel did at this.
“An nth-grade is a normal human, with all the variation that comes with that. Both babies and adults are nth-grade, just different degrees and such. When a human becomes a 1st-grade awakened, they gain some more strength in their bodies and become a bit more durable. The amount is based on the original being in nth-grade. A peak-human would gain roughly 25% more strength and durability from their previous grade. This is additive and can compound later, but you aren’t to that yet. Just know that you’re clocking in at about 50% more strength than you had before. Which isn’t massive, but noticeable. It’s even more extreme if your awakening is in the areas of strength or durability instead of some kind of exterior Void manipulation like fire-casting or summoning or whatever.”
The long explanation continued as Marshall hauled Delton into the hallway, retrieved the dead guard’s cloak, and ripped it to pieces as makeshift bandages. He was in the middle of wrapping some of the worst wounds when he smiled and responded mentally. “So what was that about ‘I’m not a guide’ talk from before?” Tethel responded with a mental sigh before Marshall continued. “So I’m not a walking tank now, but I can take a lot more punches than before?”
“Not quite.” Came the hesitant response from Tethel. “It’s more like… you can take a harder hit, but not ‘more’ hits. You can still get knocked out from the right hit, still die if your heart is hit, and can still bleed out if someone hits a vital artery. However, the force needed to do this is increased by a certain amount. It’s all based on how much the Void-energy has altered your body’s chemistry, and what it was like before it was altered.” He went quiet for a moment, then mumbled “At least, that’s true up till a certain point. 10th-Grades are downright impressive for humans.”
“Hmmm..” Marshall sounded before he realized he said that aloud. Delton turned and cocked his head at him. Marshall grimaced as he grounded himself in what he was doing again. “Sorry, the wounds are just… bad. We need to get you to a doctor quic–”
The words were cut off as another shake reverberated through the building. This one being much closer than the last. Marshall cursed and looked to the stairwell. “Yeah, we need to go.” With a huff, Marshall helped Delton to his feet and they walked through the door to the stairwell.
A large ‘B2’ hung on the wall at their landing of stairs. Marshall looked to the stairs down and grimaced. “Yeah, sorry Delton, we need to go down first.”
Delton gave a nod in response. “I have very little want to go towards the surface if it’s a firefight or something.”
Well, at least they were both on the same page with this. Marshall started dragging Delton towards the way down and they descended the stairs. Slowly at first, then picking up speed as the rhythm settled in. In between going down each step with someone that couldn’t move one of their legs at all, Marshall started talking quietly. “As the wing’s tech, what did you make of the tech level of the ones that captured you?”
Delton gave out a grunt and shook his head. “Reactionary at worst, post-industrial at best. They make a habit of scrounging together anything they can get ahold of and trying to force it to work. They have someone who knows their shit higher up, but these scientists they have in here are stumbling over themselves to make heads or tails of what they find.” He gave a sigh and continued. “Looks like some of our classes back when we were younger were true: the technological level of Humans on Terra has degraded with each generation that knows how it works passing away. Their children take up the torch and slowly forget how to do things here and there until it just stops functioning.”
A moment of silence fell over them as they reached B4, painted boldly across the last landing of the stairs and lowest level. Marshall leaned Delton against the wall and let him slide to a sitting position. “I don’t really get it. They have the means, and they have the materials… So why are they doing things like this?” Delton didn’t respond, and they rested there in silence for a moment. Then Marshall spoke again. “There’s something down here I need to get to. My gear outstanding; there’s something else deeper in that they’re playing with. These people seem really, really bad to give anything that can be used to hurt other people.”
Delton nodded to this and gritted his teeth. “I would just slow you down, I think. You got a gun?”
Marshall shook his head, but stopped himself in a moment of embarrassment and said “No, I used the last shots of the pistol I had on the door. I didn’t even think to loot the bodies for more ammo.” Marshall cursed at his haste to leave. He left so much loot upstairs that he could put to use now.
With a wave, Delton dismissed his words. “It’s fine, I guess I can’t hold a firearm anyways. Just get in there and try not to take too long.”
Marshall gave a nod and stepped towards the door. He turned the handle and it opened with a small ‘pop’, like the pressure on the inside of the door was different than out here. This made Marshall pause, but nothing flying out at him reinforced his will and pushed him to move forwards. Stepping through the doorway was like pushing himself through cold syrup and felt like it too. He shivered, looking around at the empty hall that stretched before him. Again, nothing popped out to him and nothing jumped him. It was just him, the door that he came through, and the door at the end of the twenty-foot hallway. He continued forwards to the next door and gripped that door handle as well.
This time, it wasn’t just a feeling. He actually saw small purple motes that were around his body extinguish and vanish this time. “What the…” He let go of the knob and the motes didn’t come back. Well that wasn’t at all worrying. Not even in the slightest. He gripped the knob again and, baring no new issues, pushed it open.
He stepped into a circular room that had an arch in the center, half a dozen raised platforms around the room, and a large space between the center arch and the raised platforms. About ten people were in this room, nine of which were scientist-looking people in white coats that were on the platforms. The last was an armed man standing at the door who looked surprised at Marshall’s entrance. The main viewing piece in the room, however, was the Vulture that was chained and bound in the center of the room under the arch that thrummed with Void Essence. However, it seemed contained to the arch and wasn’t moving past it.
The guard tried to raise his weapon, but Marshall grabbed the end of the gun and held the man in a stalemate, neither raising nor going down. Marshall was not that strong before his Awakening, so his increase now put him on par with these brutish grunts with guns. A part of him wanted the man to shoot him so he could see the endurance changes himself. However, that was a small, small part that was very aggressively overshadowed with the need to not be shot by a goon with a rifle. The man puffed with a red face and let go with his left hand to go for his pistol. Marshall was slightly faster and rammed his thumb into the man’s eye.
The scream and squirt of blood caused the man to stop his struggle and to reflexively grab his face. Marshall took this chance to grab the pistol on the man’s side and shoot him twice.
When the man fell, Marshall noticed that he had attracted all the attention in the room to him. Well, that was a way to enter the room. He raised up the pistol and.. Didn’t shoot it. Yeah, he would need that ammo pretty soon he figured.
“Alright everyone, what the actual fuck is gong on here? Explain it quickly… and please don’t talk to me in nerd-talk. Simple and straight-forward explanation of the Voidling, the room, and why I shouldn’t just shoot you all.”
Yeah, the negotiator. The Marine Pilot. The Marine, with a gun. Even Tethel groaned on his shoulder.