I stalked through the underbrush, a nearly full contingent of Determinators behind me. Thirty metal soldiers - each feeding me information in real time - were like another part of my body. Together we steadily drove deep into the green of the land around Sunvilla. It seemed that at some point the vegetation had grown, the nearest suspected location for a hive more towards the south west. If that was the case, then at the very least it shouldn’t take too long to acquire it. According to Arthur and Timothy, no one had really gone after the hive cores in quite some time. If they had been doing it, then they’d managed to keep it entirely a secret. I didn’t put it past them, there was always the possibility that Mack and Benjamin had their own reserve of hive cores in the event that something were to happen to the Obelisk, or modifications needed to be made.
The bulk of the reason why I suspected they might have additional cores was more due to the fact that Mack and Benjamin would want to keep the status quo.
But, not knowing where they were, or if they really existed, I had to take the hard option.
‘Finding the damn thing is going to be the hard part,’ I mentally groused, feeling one of the Determinators at the edges pause as it scanned an area. Being suspect, that particular location was subject to a second Determinator’s attention a moment later. Then a third, and as each of them came to the conclusion that it was a suspicious area, they each opened fire upon it with broad, dual-barrel rifles outfitted with our new splinter rounds - dubbed such after the Spindlies - and watched the result.
The result being a momentary burst of silver gore as the biotic that had been hiding there lost out to the brutal firepower of the metal soldiers.
I nodded, satisfied, before starting to continue. Out of the corner of my eye, though, I couldn’t help but notice that the three of the Determinator’s actually gave each other an awkward thumbs up.
“Who taught them that?” I murmured, before turning away with a shrug.
They’d come along quite a way, considering the original Determinators wouldn’t cross a room without explicit instructions to do so. Now I caught them doing random things on the side from time to time, shuffling from foot to foot or idly turning and looking at things. They were mostly emulating human behaviour as they’d seen it, but I wondered how long it would be until they began to develop past that.
Of course, I was also wary, considering each of the 36 A.I. that made up the Determinators were actually housed within myself ultimately.
Better not to think about that, I think.
After a steady pace through the jungle for almost an hour now, we finally were making progress on where the hive might be. We were monitoring the presence and number of contacts with the biotic cats, gradually charting their numbers in certain areas. After meandering through, greatly increasing our travel time and mitigating distance, I could guess the direction we needed to go in, more or less.
Which we were now driving towards, having already begun to stumble upon even more biotics as we went. It was a promising start. The sun was low, now, but light wasn’t as useful for us as I’d have preferred in this situation in the first place. Currently, we were busy utilizing general scanning technology, mapping the area with a hybrid of light-mapping and sonar.
Unfortunately, we didn’t have the kind of gear that a dedicated scout might have. Richard had revealed that he had a few sensors that could pick up on the biotics, as could Sammy. Alice, somehow, seemed to have a sixth sense for biotics around her.
I was still grappling with the possibility that humans might actually have the capacity for psychic senses. If we did, I was in a rather bittersweet position for it. Given my body, I doubted I could be interacted with on a psychic level, but that also meant that it was more than likely beyond me.
The Determinators brought me out of my thoughts with several groups ‘fact-checking’ each other at the same time, killing four more biotics in a short burst. Something qualitative shifted in the air, like we’d finally roused the jungle.
“Took them long enough,” I scoffed, feeling the Determinator’s form rank around me. They were effective, especially as they began to learn more about combat and enemy mobility.
That much was demonstrated in resplendency as three biotics attacked us from different sides, darting in before realizing that they weren’t undetected. Without hesitation, the Determinators opened fire, catching two of the biotics with grazing shots. Follow up shots killed both of them, only the third managing to get away.
I could hear the biotic hiss in the distance, and wondered how many more there were. These ones were certainly less aggressive than the wolves were. It was unusual that they were as reserved as they were, considering every other biotic we’d fought.
But, they were more of the ambush type, and given the reaction time of the Determinators, they would need to come in significantly greater numbers before they would be a threat.
It was odd, the wolves were straightforward and fragile, but their bites could sever steel if they were allowed to cling to a target for longer than a few seconds. Their jaws would, inevitably, close. Yet, these cats were only masters of disguise, something that became less and less reliable the more you knew about it. But, then, we’d had plenty of time to upgrade our gear and sharpen our skills.
The people of Sunvilla had it hard, not being able to properly gear themselves thanks to the political tribal situation they had going on.
It took us another thirty minutes of slogging through what was quickly becoming a much more humid jungle. I frowned, noting the fact that the terrain was clearly shifting to almost what seemed to be a tropical rainforest. There were plants that gradually came into the foreground that I didn’t recognize, broad leaves half a meter long, sometimes in brilliant colors. Vines reached out across the trees, some as thick as my arm, and many bearing bright red fruits. I frowned upon seeing them, certain that I’d never seen the strange, velvety looking fruit in my life.
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Cautiously, I had one of the Determinators reach for one.
Nothing at all happened, contrary to my imaginings of a vine monster whipping down to sweep up hapless prey. It opened the fruit, revealing pink flesh and two dense but small seeds. Curiously, I took off my helmet and sniffed it. It was sweet, and so far nothing I smelled from it gave me any cause for alarm. I smeared a small amount of it on my bottom lip, walking with the fruit in hand as we continued our search.
No numbness, and if anything it just smelled nice. With a shrug, I took a small bite, chewing on it slowly. It was almost as if an apple and peach had been mixed, but was much sweeter.
After chewing it for several minutes with no ill effects, I swallowed it. My body would still be capable of notifying me of poisonous food, but so long as it wasn’t something up the vein of Richard’s horrifying concoctions, I’d be fine.
Minutes later, my body seemed to digest it just fine, the fruit surprisingly nutritious as well. I ate the rest of the fruit, satisfied with the meal.
This was all well and fine, but I knew what it meant. There were Gen 2 biotics around. I wasn’t sure why they weren’t attacking Sunvilla, though, unless they had been. With the proclivity for stealth abound, for all I knew we’d walked past some of them several times.
It was then that I received the signal, one of the Determinators coming across something truly odd.
I walked towards it, flanked on all sides, seeing the structure that was nearly ten meters across, suspended in the air between the trees, five meters off of the ground.
“What the hell made this?” I frowned, a construct that looked like a large, octagonal wheel, spokes made of branches and cored with a wreath of vegetation. Flowers were abundant on its surface, vibrant shades of purple, pink, and black streaked with white. It was clear that this construct was intentional, but I didn’t know why. Certainly, I had a hard time imagining that anybody would be out here to make this.
We stayed in the clearing - an area thirty meters wide had been cleared of any offending underbrush - studying the strange structure. I knew we couldn’t wait long, but I was deeply curious as to what exactly this was.
It wasn’t long before I realized that the ground beneath the strange icon had been overturned. Not recently, but certainly methodically. It was rectangular and shape, and roughly the same size as a person.
After looking at it, I realized that there was a collection of small rocks set at the top most rim of the soil. The rocks, I noted, looked like they were arranged in a very loose circle.
Taking the view in together as a whole, it was clear that this was a grave. But why? For who?
And what was the vague sensation that pressed against my senses when I wasn’t focused?
Whenever I tried to focus on it, it fled, as though afraid to be pinned down. It was frustrating, but after a while, something else drew my notice.
One of the cats had come towards us, seeking to draw in to pounce on a Determinator on the edge of the territory. Before I could have him dispatch it, though, the biotic seemed to shiver violently and flee, taking one look up at the massive object before doing so.
I felt uneasy, not knowing what this was. With full intent to bring someone back here to investigate it properly, I marked it on my map.
With little more to do, we left the grove much as we’d found it. I wasn’t about to go digging up a possible grave, especially not with how the biotic had fled. For all I know, these biotics had learned to fear these areas.
Which meant that they probably feared whoever made these areas more.
‘I wish Yaga was here to check this out, he’d probably be able to tell us more about it.’ I clicked my tongue in annoyance. We’d have to get him out here sometimes.
‘It was very nice looking, though.’ Wolvy noted, ‘very large, too.’
I nodded in agreement. It was a beautiful construction, and clearly would have taken a great deal of time to build.
Putting it aside for now, we moved slightly more westward from there. It took us another fifteen minutes, but our efforts bore fruit.
Dug into the side of a large hill, I could see a wide open cave. It had been excavated, that much was clear from the large mounds of dirt that had smothered the vegetation largely in the area around it. From the looks of it, there wasn’t a great deal of traffic here.
That was good, we could get in and get out quickly with that.
I paused as I heard a deep bellow deeper within the forest. Straining my ears, I couldn’t hear the sound again, but I still waited another minute to be certain. With a hapless shake of my head, I walked into the entrance of the hive, melee weapon mounted on the front of my rifle, the three barrels shining a dull red in preparation for it’s deadly task.
All the while, I was curious about what might be out there, the Gen 2 of the area as much a mystery as whatever made the structure. Maybe the roar came from the Gen 2.
I set my eyes towards the darkness, red light faintly gleaming off the walls as I fired a burst of bullets down the range, hitting nothing.
Mentally I commanded the Determinators to walk with me, the lot of us stabbing the walls as we went, just in case the creatures had managed to be inside of cubby holes, or perhaps emulating the walls through gaps.
To my amusement, we immediately found two, which were pinned down and dismembered by multiple Determinators each time.
I found one a moment later, alarmed that it was even there. A groove in the wall was revealed after I’d stabbed and subsequently shot it, covering me and the tunnel in gore. Several locations seemed to have carved out regions where the biotics would slip into and merge into their surroundings. It was clever, and I found myself flabbergasted that their fur and skin could flex so completely as that.
“How did you guys even get made?” I pondered aloud, rejecting the idea that they were similar to the Spindlies. Those living bombs had been entirely expendable, the Carriers using them as little more than fodder to wear prey down.
In the end, we still didn’t know exactly what caused biotics to do what they did. The popular theory was that a biotic core would take a local bio-form and modify it in a semi-random way.
I didn’t like that explanation. It felt hollow.
These creatures, while viewed separately, might be random enough to be explained away as such. But - and I’m sure I wasn’t the only one to think this - when viewed in light of their other types, I couldn’t help but be suspicious of an overarching pursuit. The wolves utilized massive numbers and jaws that, if one locked onto you, would close regardless of the density of the metal, or hardness. We’d tested it even with our newer alloys that were still in testing, and they still managed to cut through it. It wasn’t simply bite pressure, but the fact remained that a Gen 1 biotic was using a weapon that only was weak because they themselves were fragile, and that was supplemented by using horde tactics to increase the chances that at least one wolf could get an attack through.
That wasn’t even to mention the presence of the Unique Karaslava, the bear from so long ago. It’s entire purpose was to direct wolves and serve as a stronger up front threat. Perhaps had it been given time, we’d have seen an entirely new combat strategy come out of the wolves near Gilramore.
I put the thoughts away for now. None of this would help me seize the core.
Shade dropped altitude over the entrance in the event that a large number of the biotics came back from the hive.
With that settled, myself and 30 Determinators made our way deeper into the hive, hearing snarling creatures deeper in the tunnel as they realized stealth was no longer an option.
“That’s right, come and make our jobs easier.” I leveled the gun forward, allowing the Determinator’s to continue probing the walls.