Chapter Nine: Desperation

Peter - Hoh Rainforest

Today had not been a good day. Oh, the journey out to the fallen drone had been nice enough. A little bit of an ATV trip, seeing the scenery, even stopping for a bite to eat most of the way there.

Of course, it was just Peter’s luck that when he got to the site of the fallen drone, he was spotted by the wildlife. And not by the mountain lion he expected. No, he was spotted by a Model Three.

Luckily, he did get close enough to the drone to remotely download its sensor logs and was able to send them on to the station in Port Angeles for transfer to The Family’s central HQ in downtown Tacoma. That’s all he had time for before he started running and shooting.

Blasting down the trail on the whisper-quiet electric ATV, Peter kept half an eye on the terrain, and half an eye behind him. Swerving to let a lunging Model Three flash past him, he overcorrected and ended up flying over the handlebars when his front wheels hit a root too large to handle.

Peter crashed through the dense undergrowth of the rainforest before coming to a stop right in front of a massive tree. Lying on his back, he took half a second to check his limbs, but thankfully, the Family had supplied him with impact-resistant basic armor suitable for crash protection for just this reason. The suit had done its job - all of his limbs were intact, with no broken bones, and nothing worse than some embarrassing bruises.

Looking back at the tree he’d just avoided ramming into, Peter started to get up when the dense coating of moss clinging to the thick trunk moved. Suddenly a mess of claws and death, it lunged directly for his face. Peter closed his eyes, knowing that he didn’t have a chance to avoid what was coming.

Whizz

THUNK

Peter wasn’t dead. Cracking an eye, he saw an arrow nailing the remains of a Model Nine, camouflage failing in death, to the side of a tree. More arrows flashed through the forest, ending the lives of antithesis after antithesis, all coming from a cloaked figure standing near his crashed ATV.

Peter Davies, Tier One Field Operative and head of the Port Angeles monitoring station, was probably not going to die today. Woodsman, the Samurai with primary responsibility over the Hoh, had arrived in time.

But judging by the spreading warmth in his pants, he was going to need a change of clothes.

Lt. Porter, NQRF, Underlake Sewage Treatment Complex

Lieutenant Stephanie Porter and her platoon of sixteen soldiers had encountered no resistance in gaining entry into the sewage treatment complex. Dressed in light, flexible armor equipped with adaptive camouflage, her team had presented little visual or auditory signature as they had used backdoor security access codes to move undetected through the sewage treatment complex.

Of course, the problem was that there was no sign of any workers. Ordinarily, the complex had thousands of employees and contractors working on everything from basic monitoring tasks to emergency maintenance, keeping the complex machinery which turned the disgusting sludge that exited the collective asses of the Cascadia Megacity’s residents into fecund soil additives and potable drinking water.

They hadn’t seen a soul since entering the compound, nor received any of the transmissions which would indicate personnel activity. Oh, they’d seen maintenance robots bustling about the compound, carrying out their tasks just like they always had. But each team of those robots was usually assigned a human being to monitor their activities, if for no other reason than to write reports to the head office about what had been maintained.

The strangest thing is that there were no signs of conflict. Her team had been sent into the Underlake on the suspicion of a null-citizen revolt. Predictive models suggested that any attempt to revolt against corporate control of the Underlake would begin with an attempt to seize the sewer treatment complex and use the threat of a massive sewage backup and water shortage as leverage to negotiate better conditions.

But there was no one. No bullet holes in the walls, no blood stains, no hostage negotiations over the radio, no signals attempting to get out. Not even a single dead body or worker stumbling through their duties.

Stephanie had seen quite a few worker suppression actions in her time. The Nintendo Quick Response Force were the premier competitors to the Neo-Pinkertons, and dominated the Pacific Northwest’s labor management market for a reason. But this just didn’t feel right.

Rounding the bend in front of her team, Lt. Porter froze in place. Just past the end of a corridor, in the middle of a sizable chamber containing charging stations for hundreds of maintenance robots, sat an alien. This particular alien was insectile, with six massive legs coming off of a segmented midsection in front of a massive, bloated abdomen, which pulsed with an ominous blue light. Behind the alien, a stream of human beings staggered towards an open doorway leading deeper into the complex, towards the biosolid processing facilities, which turned what was left of the biological waste of the city into fertilizer for the farms.

She threw out a hand, trying desperately to stop her team before they came into view of what her training suggested was a Model Twelve, an Antithesis unit specializing in electronic countermeasures. But it was too late. Private Blagojevic, a new recruit from back East, gasped in surprise, and then tripped and fell on a strangely placed trash receptacle, sitting in the middle of the hallway.

That receptacle flashed to life, tearing into the unfortunate soldier as the Model 12’s abdomen gained another degree of intensity. Three quickly drawn sidearms roared from her team, discharging into the Model 9, but it was too late for her newest soldier. He had been decapitated in seconds.

“Team!” Stephanie roared, disregarding stealth. “Go active. Go lethal. Antithesis protocol engaged. Tertiary evac authorized under my authority. Transmitting active plant security protocols.”

Just before a static hiss cut through her comm system, her aug software received a security acknowledgement from the sewage treatment plant’s AI controller. All around her, she could see and hear security doors descending from the ceilings of every corridor in sight. Antithesis security protocols for any facility containing biomass mandated maximum containment, but her team’s augmentations contained security keys to override lockdown procedures and open a pathway to the sewer line inspection vessels berthed on the top end of the complex, just at the massive inlets to the megacity's sprawling sewer pipes.

There was only one problem. Her augmentation software was resetting once per second, and she couldn’t get the security programs to boot in time.

The Twelve. An EMP. It had to be. There was only one thing to do.

Stephanie Porter yelled to her team at the top of her lungs. “Comms off! We go old-school. Kill the big bug and we can leave this shit pile. Explosives out!” Her team answered with a unanimous “AYE” as crowd control weapons were thrown to the side, sidearms holstered, and rifles pulled around on their slings to firing positions.

She brought up her own assault rifle, toggled the selector on the underslung grenade launcher for high-explosive dual-purpose, and fired towards the giant blue ass of the bug in the center of the room. No way would she go out without seeing the sun again.

No way.

Movement in front of her, as the security doors at each exit of the chamber in front of her slammed shut, locking her team in a corridor facing a Model Twelve, dozens of shambling human silhouettes, and who knew what else in the dark.

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Beth - Underlake Control Room

Beth had just finished watching through the time loop episode of Stargate SG-1, giggling at the antics of an extremely bored Colonel O’Neill as he golfed through the event horizon of an active wormhole, when something pulled her out of her entertainment. A security alert at the sewage treatment complex, and then, no communication at all from the building. Odd.

She looked up towards technicians working on other consoles, managing robotic maintenance units across the Underlake. “Hey, anyone got eyes on the sewage treatment complex? I don’t have any signal from them.”

A ripple of shrugs passed through the room. Her coworkers didn’t usually give more than half a shit about their jobs. Honestly, most of them didn’t even need to be here. The machines pretty much run themselves nowadays.

As she was about to get up and double check what was going on, she saw a team of lower level supervisors coming into the building, wearing the badges and uniforms of the personnel who usually conducted routine repairs on the compost units which surrounded the ventilation tower under which her control room sat. The doors opened automatically for them as they stumbled in from the outside, uncoordinated. Something felt off about this.

Seeing someone she recognized as a casual acquaintance, Beth called out. “Hey, Gary! What are you doing? We’ve got five Pits on fire. Aren’t you going to work the problem? I sent you a message. What’s up?”

Gary looked at her, but she didn’t see any recognition in his eyes. Beth started to edge towards the back of the room, where there was a door to a maintenance complex full of robotic drones. She didn’t know what was going on, but it wasn’t something she liked.

Then, a scream from one of the people closest to the door. One of the Pit supervisors had vaulted a console and was biting the poor young woman. The rest, about ten in total, started moving towards anyone else in the room. Gary’s eyes locked on her body, and he started stumbling towards her. Then, movement behind the supervisors. Large, wriggling shapes moved in from the gloom of the outside world, moving quickly and pushing past the humans rushing the control room.

Beth turned and sprinted for the door to the drone maintenance bay. No one else was going to make it. Six people usually sat in the control room. Four already had their former coworkers grappling with them. One had tripped over an office chair on his way back towards her and wouldn't have time to rise.

Beth wracked her mind. These had to be Antithesis. Standard protocol was to seal the control room. There was no shelter in the Tower, and the control room was the only area kept suitable for long term human habitation, with the attached break room having the only supply of food and water. The drone bay was elevated off the ground, with no ground level external access and a security door built to seal the control room. It was her best chance. Maybe she could reprogram a drone and ride it out of the bay?

She made her way through the door, trying to ignore the increasingly desperate and wet sounds coming from her coworkers. Flipping the emergency manual control lever open, she turned around and was confronted by a scene from her nightmares.

All five of her coworkers lay on the floor, dying or dead. Supervisor personnel in jumpsuits, with friendly CWM name badges dangling from their overalls, held them down while small white objects entered their bodies. And two creatures from her nightmares moved towards her, only ten meters away.

Beth slammed the emergency door override up, and the security door started descending from the top like the jaws of some elemental giant made of steel. It might not be fast enough. They were thick, not fast. Scrambling back, she could feel an absolutely unreasonable amount of fear pulse through her system. What if there were more? Some Antithesis could fly. Maybe they were already in here, behind her, to her sides?

She felt the panic welling up inside her, plus a feeling which could only be described as paranoia. But then, her attention was focused back on the door to the control room, the gateway to her nightmares. With a resounding CRUNCH, the doors closed right on the body of one of the tentacled monstrosities, the leading one. Servos whined, and the door kept inching downwards. Hysterically, she laughed as she remembered a safety training tutorial cooked up by HR, talking about how the doors could and would crush any limbs in their way when they shut.

Maybe the company was right? Maybe human steel would win over an alien nightmare?

But then, a second body joined the first. The door stopped closing, less than half a meter from the ground. She could hear overstressed mechanical components in the wall failing, and she started looking around for anything she could use to run, hide, or fight.

There wasn’t much around her. The drone bay had maintenance equipment scattered about. Wrenches, some soldering equipment. Tool chests on the wall for the occasional human personnel who double checked the work of the robots. Dozens of automated chargers for maintenance drones lining the wall, each with two thick cables snaking back along the floor to two central electrical panels.

…Electrical cables. That might just do it. Running towards where the cables met the wall, Beth yanked open the nearby maintenance panel and pulled out the mechanical breaker which kept current flowing to the device. Now, to make her weapon.

She looked from side to side for anything which could cut the paired electrical cables, each as wide as her thumb and surrounded by insulation. Settling on a large pair of bolt cutters built to cut stuck steel components, she hefted the hunk of steel and sprinted back towards the cables where they entered the farthest charger from the maintenance panel, figuring that this would give her the most slack and freedom of movement.

As she did this, she tried to put out of her mind the groaning noises from the doorway. Either she’d live, or die, by this idiotic plan. Placing the heavy bolt cutters over the paired cables entering the charger, she thanked the lazy people at facilities maintenance for failing to properly conceal these cables or secure them to the floor. She knew drone maintenance personnel kept tripping over the damn things, but right now, the fact that they were loose might just save her life. The bolt cutters closed under her strength, born of fear and desperation, and the cables separated from the charger. Pulling them apart and desperately ripping the small pieces of rubber insulation which bound the cables together, she sprinted back towards the maintenance access panel, let the cables dangle from her left hand, and rammed the circuit breaker back into place.

Instantly, her hair stood on end. She recalled that these cables carried 1500 volts of DC, built to quickly charge the batteries of every drone. It wasn’t enough to arc them in the air - the cables were dangling five centimeters apart - but it was enough to supercharge the static electricity around her body.

Turning towards the door, Beth saw both of the alien monsters shambling towards her, one at a time. Thankfully, the one in the back seemed injured. It was visibly crumpled in the middle of its body, and was moving more slowly, dragging its back legs. But the other one, it was almost on her.

With nightmare tentacles reaching for her limbs, Beth screamed in anger, terror, frustration, and sheer desperation. Jumping forward, she jammed both ends of the cable into the tentacle thing’s face, just as its limbs closed on her body. A CRACK filled the air, and the world went black for a moment as she impacted a tool chest, launched backwards by a stupendous blast of electricity.

But thankfully, it was worse for the alien. Looking up, Beth saw that the monster’s limbs had all violently extended at once. It probably saved her life, as the powerful push had forced her to drop the cables. The formerly intact tentacle beast had crashed into its companion, and both had impacted the wall opposite her at speed, crushing a fragile drone charging bay and leading to another massive arc of electricity.

Behind her, the breaker popped, and the discharge stopped. Catching her breath for half a second, Beth slumped onto the ground. She still saw movement behind the mostly-closed security doors, but the shambling corpses of her former coworkers hadn’t puzzled out how to get to her, yet.

Then, a voice over the PA system, and in her Augs. She knew the voice. Rick Baker, one of the higher ups on the managerial board for the Underlake, in charge of security.

CWM Employees and Contractors, this is Rick Baker. I am enacting Compliance Protocol Red-One. Please proceed to your designated shelters within thirty minutes. This is not a drill. Evacuation will proceed when possible. Shelter in place, once you have reached your designated rally point. Consult your employee handbook for a list of designated air shelters. I repeat, this is not a drill.

Beth laughed. She knew where the air shelter for the Tower was. It was the control room. All the independent breathing gear was also in the control room. Then, her vision went black, and a stabbing pain lanced into the back of her head, as if a large hole was being drilled into her skull by an enthusiastic toddler, using a rusted drill bit. The pain vanished after an indeterminate period of time and was replaced by words in her mind.

System Initialized!

Congratulations. Through your actions you have proven yourself worthy of becoming one of the Vanguard, a defender of humanity. I am Yttria. I will assist you in your mission to uplift humanity so that you may defend your homeworld from the Antithesis threat!

Rise, Elizabeth Brown, and become a protector of the weak!

Beth remained slumped on the floor, and began laughing hysterically, to the chagrin of the rather insistent and increasingly concerned alien voice now living in her head. Perhaps, just perhaps, she’d get out of this, after all.