"It’s so cold, and yet... these blooms are so warm. Where is it they lead?"
The time following her repayment was grueling.
Vahlen and the other senior Ravenguard leaders trained them personally over the next few months that Melissa could only describe as hell.
There were no days off for a trainee, many of the first one hundred candidates washed out in the first week of brutal training. A few suffered broken limbs with their new Sabre suits, not understanding how to nudge it, a few others simply couldn’t interface and were designated for other roles.
The suits came with specialized training of their own, each had a thousand different functions.
Melissa’s most needed one while travelling the Appalachian Mountains of Zone 17 with Ripley, Mekrah, and Gary in a blizzard.
Navigation.
She was certain Vahlen made sure they loved their suits before denying their use on their final qualification.
Escape Zone 17.
Escape Fire Team Onyx.
They had already caught 23 of them, 14 died in the cold.
2 were found eaten by a large animal of some kind.
Endotherm flowers around their bodies.
The other 8 members were missing.
She learned to trust Mekrah and Gary over their weeks together in the mountains.
Their task was to return home uncaptured.
Alive.
Melissa shivered at te icy chill of the apartment they found themselves in, who ever owned it had nice taste in her eyes. Cozy wood furniture and a half destroyed couch that Mekrah’s large frame broke.
Gary’s smaller frame made a nest in the carcass, its prime white couch meat dulled grey over decades.
Ripley winced at her knee, her gloves did only so much to protect her trembling fingers, still cold from the blizzard that violently whistled outside.
“I hear your teeth chattering.” Gary said, he was a lean man, almost perpetually carrying a sad look in his eye, “you good?” She nodded.
“I am cold, my wound hurts.” She placed a hand gently and painfully over the gash, barely bandaged. The long march through the cold saw it partially frost bitten at the edges.
Melissa nodded, getting up from assembling a pot and burner for warmth and their dinner. The potatoes, foraged witches butter, oyster mushrooms, and turkey, gracefully dressed by Gary days prior, slowly began steaming as she added water from their boiled snow supply.
Ripley accepted Melissa’s helping hand to what remained of the bathroom.
“It’s bleeding again, got clipped pretty good, huh?”
“Yes, I did not expect that walkway to collapse.” Ripley sat on the vanity and its rotted wood barely concealed by chipping teal paint.
“You remind me of a curious cat sometimes,” she smiled, shaking her head as she rolled her uniform pant leg up, the jagged gash ran deeply, “always finding a way into trouble.”
Melissa winced at the sight, her medical training clicking in, overriding the nausea.
“And you remind me of a jumpy rabbit.” She laughed as she cleaned her wound. Ripley winced, stifling a scream as she clenched a fist and jerked.
“Sorry, sorry, I have to clean it, Ripley. It’s bad, not gonna lie,” she looked Ripley in the eye, “you need to stop jerking around or you’ll bleed out, I have a sedative.” Ripley interjected before she could finish.
“No, no, Morridol and I, we do not mix.” Ripley made horrible gestures both front and back that Melissa could only explain as.
“Gross.” She replied, “then, stop moving or I’ll stick you in the ass.”
Ripley was surprised to see that Melissa had already began the process of repairing the wound, “you sound very much like Eta.”
“Yeah yeah, she taught me this stuff, in her own, special, ways...” She pulled the bio foam membrane off, debriding and cleaning the rent as Ripley gripped the vanity hard enough to break the teal paint flakes off.
She did her best to hold still as Melissa apologetically applied stitches and bio sealant. Once her knee was wrapped and she was returned to an upright position, she paused to look at the filthy mirror, wiping away the dust.
As she stared at herself and Melissa, a third person was in the cramped bathroom with them. She whipped her head back, Melissa following her gaze with confusion.
Nothing but the empty bathtub greeted her as Melissa began sanitizing the pliers and stitching needle with a chemical cleaner.
The shower curtain bent smoothly akin to a spring-wound spiral, it was set perfectly in the center of the bathtub.
As she timidly looked back at the mirror, that nameless wrong feeling assaulted her senses.
A wet crunching deep within her consciousness guided her suddenly blurring vision to the spiraled curtain rod in the tub.
Strangely.
She witnessed it somehow looking back at her, it was an anomaly of some kind, something curled the rod, placed it purposefully.
The thing that chilled her as she overlooked its silhouette in the dark light of Melissa’s display lamp.
It pointed with deliberate intent.
“Hey, you good?” Melissa’s voice calmed her nerves as the disturbing aura on the reflective surface was gone.
“I thought I witnessed something.”
“What did you see?” She finished packing up in well practiced movements.
“A little girl pointing at us.” Ripley pointed at the spiral of metal.
“That’s creepy.”
They spent the remainder of the evening taking an uneasy watch until a blizzard wracked dawn arrived, the gloomy grey light bleeding through the fabric on the windows.
Melissa was busy checking the interior doors of each apartment unit of the second floor while Mekrah cooked breakfast. As she peaked outside through the sheet covered window at the end of the hall, she noticed that one of the vague outlines of something across the street seemed to look back.
Not entirely in her direction, its antlers swooning downward as it ate old winter grass. She wondered why the massive buck was wandering in a blizzard, but she knew. It was simply hungry.
It was safe in a blizzard, until it wasn’t.
She ensured her gear was set up properly for her exterior check, hoping for a closer look before it could scamper off.
Melissa surveyed the doors and windows of the little alleyway block before reaching the buck, still standing and eating away at the tall grass.
The massive thing brayed loudly, a strange, out of season mating call.
“Mid-January,” she whispered, “supposed to make noises like that in October or November.” Studying it closely, she noted one key feature that set it apart.
It had 3 eyes, perfectly lined up in a row, it was apparent that its skull had slowly been splitting or perhaps merging with another fallen buck. Likely stuck together during a duel in October, and through the months must have somehow survived until it began merging while dragging the dead one.
Or, more likely, its severed head, made clearly evident by the bulging mass on the side of its neck, fused with no seams, its fur and skin covering it as if it were always meant to be there.
Perhaps it brayed out a mating call simply because it was the dead head’s last primal directive, it only reminded her of the strange happenings on the rim of Decker’s Basin. The cows, the horses, any large mammal.
Regardless of their shape, all went to the edges of the road and stared inside, it felt like they were waiting for something to arrive.
As the whistler finally sauntered away, she noticed that just behind it on the street. A stop sign was turned over on itself like a bendy straw. Curled much like the telephone pole at the urban temple.
The Masque. It all flooded her vision as the intrusive wave of thoughts battled her.
Her eyes.
They burned, she rubbed them, it didn’t help. Her goggles offered relief as they came back on, she miserably straightened, her lower back on fire briefly.
What troubled her the most as she stared at the lone stop sign, it wasn’t like that the day prior.
Once her security check was completed of the first floor’s exterior, she noticed a tiny crack in one of the bottom windows leading to the un-explored first floor and basement.
It wasn’t there a few hours prior.
As her rifle scanned the rest of the windy street, her fingers feeling frozen and her face burning with the cold chill, she saw no trace of anything.
No footprints.
No grass or hooves.
Just blizzard.
Just all consuming white.
It was an occupied area, anything could be across the blustering street. She questioned herself as to why she was even out there, but she knew.
She knew she, and Fire Team Onyx would attack during bad weather, especially a blizzard. Wolves did the same thing.
She hoped whatever it was that could be out there was human as she reentered through the second floor, a simple rope affixed to a secure wall stud.
As she climbed, she noticed a set of hoof prints just outside the window, she shivered as the rope coiled in her hands and the vicious winds were cut off by the closing window of an emptied apartment.
She wove between the booby-trapped hallway, while Gary and Mekrah sealed the windows at either end of the hall, that included utter darkness. Her thermals lit the series of tripwires and lines she set up, the staircase and hall leading to the third story was the same.
“Friendly coming in.”
The burbling surface of the stew she prepared earlier that day as night fell brought comfort. She spoke about the buck she saw and the strange occurrences at the urban temple and Masque Theater.
“I saw something like that bent out of shape stop sign in front of the urban temple before we got augmented. But inside, there was a little girl… she was waving at me, and Amanda saw the same thing…”
“I do not like this selection of hiding place.” Ripley curtly said, rubbing her arms, the little freckle on the left side raising as a punctuation.
“And that whistler only showed up when…” Melissa’s eyes darkened in a despairing way, flicking back and forth in horror that she pushed deep down.
“That little girl waved...”
“This fear is a good thing, it will keep us awake for the next day or two I am sure.”
A heavy sigh escaped Gary, “yeah, and we’ve been awake for what, 3 days now? Why don’t we nap at least? I can take first watch. I’ve already got the shakes.”
She ladled some of the foraged stew in into Ripley’s mess cup, the stainless-steel handle wafting warmth to her hands as she sighed gratefully and leaned back on her rucksack.
The team ate, Ripley occasionally rubbing her knee between bites.
Gary had a curious look on his face as he regarded Melissa from his nest of cloth, the spikes of remaining wood still jutting at its edges, “say, haven’t I seen you around on some Federation channels? For something bad?”
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
The troubled ecologist paused mid-bite atop the old couch cushion on the floor.
The spoon of soup dangled in the barely warmed air before she blew and responded.
“I was a person who had a warrant for her arrest… I violated some serious laws back then. Arson, no matter the reason is still a felony, even if it's to burn an infested field down stuffed to the brim with Cadre soldiers and noctus.”
“The Western Federation aren’t good news, and if I’m being honest, I don’t like that Vahlen is working with them, and I hate the weird shit that happens around those testing sites in Deckers Basin, more and more animal reports, livestock acting strange on the rim...” She shook her head to silence.
“One must make strange bedfellows in the name of survival,” Ripley said softly, “it was much the same in my home country, Losbana underwent a revolution of rights after the unification of most of old Europe, Italy, and, France… I had turned 18 and upon attempting to leave…” she blew on her spoon before biting.
“Travel ban, black moon, and Cadre soldiers taking as many people as they could, so, I took a rebel merchants vessel for four months to the Virginia coast.” Her eyes seemed to glow reverently, “I could not but stare at the stars on our way there. So unpolluted by any light source, so pure, I watched the black moon cross by daily.”
She rubbed her knee, “this is what drew me deeply into cosmological science, Ravensmantle taught me the very things I know, and I want to know everything there is about that celestial body of horror.”
“Glad you’re here.” Melissa smiled, a sudden eyebrow raise saw a look of confusion crossing Ripley’s face.
“Stop dicking with it. You’re only going to make it worse.” Her hand sheepishly went back to holding her fork.
“I am happy to have met you,” both shared a smile as they finished off their food while Mekrah hummed to himself, working on his gear from the fraying dinner table.
The scrape of the knife on the sharpening stone seemed to musically add to his baritone.
“Life was hard as a foreign person,” she chuckled to herself, “I had to learn English, and it was not until I had met Vahlen I learned it best, she happened to know French.”
She winced as Melissa finished off her food and got up. She unslung her rifle.
“Want me to get some snow for an ice pack? I need to do a security check anyway.”
“If you do not mind.” She nodded, switching her night vision on, Gary got up to follow her with his rifle in hand.
“No lone go zone.” He said simply, Melissa always thought he had a puppy-follows demeanor, but overtime realized it was a protective feeling.
He admitted his feelings for her were merely platonic.
He had a sister once, couldn’t protect her. Melissa told him she wasn’t an analogue to be used for absolving his guilt, but she didn’t mind the company.
The dark oak paneled hallway had wire-lines and jingling cans to navigate, she made sure to lock the doors of the hall. All save for the gloomy stairwell, as she ducked under one of her lines to peek out from a crouch.
Pitch darkness greeted her, the windows near the bottom were shattered, causing snow to pile up and cover the first few landings entirely.
She would need a shovel to get to the first floor.
As the snow crunched in her hands, she could only check behind her at the dark hallway of the second floor. Anything could be there, just behind the barricades of chairs and tables taken from other apartment units. Watching and waiting for its moment to strike, her rifle angled at the dark spaces.
Neither had fully checked the second floor save for the first few rooms, no doors were ajar. Strange growths formed on the edge of the opening leading deeper into the abyss of water-logged teal paint and rotten carpet.
As her thermals swept over a doorway deep in the inky darkness, she sighted familiar flowers, emitting a faint heat signature. They were a stark contrast to the icy doorway they grew from just a few doors down.
“Gary,” he paused before creeping up to the barricade, “nest or a visitor that way.” He aimed his all-spectrum sighted rifle at the blooms.
He lowered his rifle as Melissa continued.
“Those weren’t there an hour ago, I think we’re breached.” He just as quickly gestured to go back up.
They hurried back up the steps in silence, looking at the upper windows, barely holding an avalanche back. As she and Gary navigated the lines, it felt as if something was right behind her, rifle swung up to meet nothing as she held her burning breath.
She heard nothing save for the pin drop silence. Save for one thing that rose the hairs on the back of her neck as her gaze automatically tracked under her feet.
Below, on the first or second floor, she heard a faint creaking sound that confirmed her suspicions.
The building was occupied, whoever the occupant was, they didn’t care about making noise while digging through old rooms in search of food or shelter. With her team inside, it was invariably both.
She pushed the feelings of sleeping with that monster in the closet away.
It was just an herbivore. Right?
“Friendly coming in.” Gary’s voice shook slightly at the sound of dishware and plates shattering below.
“Clear.” Ripley looked incredibly tense as she blurrily looked at Melissa, thankful for the ice she placed in a plastic bag, the snow forming perfectly on her swollen knee.
“My thanks,” a relieved sigh escaped her as she leaned her head back to a comfortably elevated position. She rested her rifle on her chest, pointing at the door.
“We’re clear, possible nest downstairs. We’re shacking up with a gestaltia animal, whistler maybe.”
Ripley shot up, her face told Melissa she better be joking.
“No joke…” she looked at the window, the blizzard outside told her to stay put or die, “I think it’s an herbivore.”
Mekrah sat up slightly from running his knife on his ceramic sharpening stone, “those tales of whistlers remind me of a very old tale I was told as a kiddo. That creatures or some supernatural phenomenon made anything stick to anything like glue under the right conditions.”
“The conditions being?” Gary let it hang as he stretched on the broken couch, somehow finding comfort among its twisted metal and bent wood.
“Perhaps it is akin to up painted surfaces of metal touching in space, with no oxygen barrier,” Ripley laced her fingers, “boop, they stick, instantly welded.”
“So maybe the principle is affecting their intractability somehow? I still have yet to catch the variety dropping those seeds... and that one is terrifying, I won’t lie.” Ripley nodded as Mekrah continued sharpening, Gary stretched as Melissa lowered her voice.
“We’re stuck, so we just need to keep it down. There’s much more than one whistler out here, it’s a species, after all. I think it may have broken in through a compromised window I saw earlier, I’ll confirm in the morning.”
“Merde,” Ripley sighed, “I should not be surprised, it is the Appalachian trail, after all.” Melissa snorted as she sat back down.
“Yep, unmanned for decades by man, untouched by tourists.” Mekrah stated flatly as he leaned back, knife still resting on the stone. “And we’re fucken stuck here for who knows how long.”
“May as well lay up till’ dawn.” Gary said derisively as he pulled his soft cap over his eyes.
“Hey, it’s not my fault this building just happens to exist here, besides,” Melissa sat on her cushion on the living room floor.
“It’s so warm inside,” she vaguely gestured around to the others, “and with all the great snacks in here I’m surprised there isn’t one beating our door down right now just to get a taste.”
“You and your flattery may just get us into trouble.” She laughed, “I enjoy being looked upon, even by the eyes of the lecherous. However, the eyes of the hungry, I would prefer not to be observed.”
“What if it’s both lecherous and hungry?”
“I, even with this leg of mine the way it is, would run. For those are the eyes of my husband.”
“Yeah, he’s fucking fast too.” Gary’s voice carried a tone of comedy, Melissa saw Mekrah wince, remembering clearly how he flew through a second story window with Bishop’s fist curled around his collar.
Mekrah used a small glass breaker to crack his lenses and blind him before breaking for the trees, he shot him in the ass with a few stinger rounds for his troubles.
“Agreed, Gary, and he’s big, but somehow, that giant can fit inside places only a rat could squeeze through.”
“He is rather flexible,” Ripley put a finger to her chin thoughtfully, “in many more ways than I would expect a man of his stature to be capable of.”
“Isn’t he double jointed?”
“He is, actually.”
“So...” Mekrah paused, “he’s like a turbo ferret?” The group laughed as the night drew on, each member speaking in more and more hushed tones so as not to wake the buck a story below.
As Ripley snored quietly an hour later, Melissa worked on her MPA while Gary and Mekrah went out for a security check. The gleaming black barrel and housing containing a row of coils designed to propel bullets impossibly fast. The overall performance of commonly available firearms made for cheap tools of war.
Utter chaos followed as the Cadre declared it on Earth.
As if they were declaring it for a divine purpose humanity never understood. Her instincts nagged at her repeatedly, a cloying warmth on the back of her neck brought a brief flash of pain as she blankly utter a reply to a few words uttered by Gary.
As both made entry, Mekrah spoke quietly, there was a certain primal fear in his gaze.
“The window outside is completely busted out, that scratched one you mentioned.”
“Alright, found its entry and exit... lets shore up downstairs in the morning, last thing we need is a three eyed buck tearing up the place.”
They did just that in the morning, Melissa found that she had a clear line of sight to the underground window from the third floor. She spent long hours taking watch from the end of the hall, feeling anxious that her back was exposed.
But, she stayed, specifically to understand how a buck managed to fit through such a tight space.
She knew the buck fit inside the basement, but how? The antlers couldn’t possibly allow it to enter, it had to be something else. Hours drew on, the blizzard grew worse as it seemed to eat the remaining half of the street alive.
Her observation was spent idly chitchatting with her own mind up until a misty, massive shape crept out from the darkness of the dusty, white sky.
Her breath caught in her throat as she swallowed dryly. Something, something wasn’t right about the way it moved, about its size. It was far too large to be the buck, this creature and its matted fur looked more like a moose, caterpillar-like in the most oblique way.
She counted repeatedly, feeling suddenly exposed in the icy apartment hall, six walking appendages in total with a pair that seemed to be under its mouth. The snow flurries made her waning vantage point useless as it slowly slunk towards the window.
“Fucking blizzard...” she hissed, jumping at the sound of her own voice, as her gaze panned to the window for one lst look, a little girl stood at the edge of the whiteout.
She hurriedly made her way back to the room, shutting and locking the ancient wood barricade.
The noises from downstairs seemed to have intent behind them, doors were getting beaten down, wire lines snapping.
Something. Is. Wrong.
Her rifle’s MPA whined on after the rest of the group readied their weapons, her bleary eyes sighting at the hallway after raising her rifle at the barricaded door.
“There’s,” Melissa was cut off by a horrendous shriek from below, it was an aching, pained cry.
“Hello?”
“Someone is calling for help,” Ripley glanced back at Melissa, “I do not believe it to be safe.” She nodded in agreement.
“Where?” A whisper escaped Gary as he scanned their domicile. They froze, hearing boots on squelching carpet, they slowed as if listening for something.
Mekrah whispered as he pointed his rifle at the door, leaning his head at Melissa, “kill that lamp.” She swiftly complied, dialing the burner out.
Each donned their goggles, casting their surroundings in eerie grey.
“Hello? Can you hear me?”
A lilting voice called out, something about the way it echoed deeply bothered Melissa, it sounded close, yet so far away and she couldn’t pinpoint its precise location.
“Whoever that is, it might be one of ours... I don’t know the voice.”
Strange familiarity rose as she thought about who the voice could belong to. The voice that crept through the floorboards under their boots sounded wet.
Crunchy.
Wrong.
Clatters and pangs sounded from below as something triggered the tripwires she set hours prior, the tin cans and dishware spinning violently on empty paint cans and bare walls.
Ripley slowly kept shaking her head, her eyes increasingly concerned as her grip tightened on her rifle, slowly getting up and limping to the sliding door of the balcony.
“I do not like this hiding place,” she whispered under the cover of the cacophony below, Melissa nodded, hurriedly packing her bags and throwing them on. Ripley packed as she limped around her gear and tossing it on the sled.
“We must risk the blizzard.”
“I need help.”
“Let me peek at least,” Gary said, “I wanna make sure we’re not leaving an ally behind.”
Before any of them could react, Gary swept into the dark corridor with Mekrah following in silence while the other pair prepped for a hurried escape, Melissa unblocked the back sliding door while Mekrah whispered after Gary to come back.
Melissa began moving the furniture away from the windowed sliding door as Ripley kept her eyes fixed on the decrepit apartment entrance.
Mekrah’s voice was lost to the distance of the long hallway, he was calling for Gary, Gary was calling for the person to speak again.
That he couldn’t find her.
Another large step squelched on the soggy flooring in the rain soaked hall below.
“Over here.”
“Where? Just keep snapping your fingers,” the snapping was rhythmic, quick.
Shallow, akin to bone raked of steel.
“I see you, come out with your hands,” his voice trailed into a terrified scream.
Both jumped slightly at the gunfire, Mekrah was screaming with him, grunts of sustained effort and what must have been vicious blows.
Their training clicked in.
The whistler’s clicks echoed within.
Mekrah came back frantically, “friendly,” he gasped wetly, rushing inside and slamming the door shut behind him and pushing the couch and furniture to barricade it as he shakily spoke.
“Gary’s dead, I saw some kind of…” he checked his bloody winter mittens. “I tried to save him, we need to go, we need to go now. It’s fucking huge, took his arm and tore his fucking throat out.”
A rumbling step sounded down the hallway, a strange suckling breath stole the silence as something climbed over the abandoned stair railing, the metal groaning in protest to something heavy as a wire line snapped.
“I’m sorry.”
Mekrah desperately pushed a finger to his mouth. The voice was so light and airy, it almost felt soothing.
The decayed door frame hiding in the pitch-black fathoms of the entry way seemed to give in wet splinters. A slow force pushed the door and couch as it spoke again, threatening to bow inward and shatter.
“Hey, can you help me?”
The doorknob jiggled. Mekrah shook his head.
“Please?”
The door cracked open.
They couldn’t fully see the doorway from their position, but both knew neither had actual bullets. The sliding door stuck briefly, Melissa tugging at it harder. With effort, it cracked, the stinging breeze whooshing in.
“I can hear you.”
Everything went still as both hurriedly clambered on the sled, the hill leading into total darkness awaited them.
The apartment entry door cracked enough for Melissa to see something that made her blood run colder than the air she painfully gasped in.
Something circular.
In its center, a small rivet point only made clear by her enhanced vision.
The voice, it didn’t sound natural.
“I can see.”
It only further enhanced its color as the door pushed inward as Mekrah pushed both, the sled barely large enough to fit all three of them.
He closed the backdoor as quietly as he could.