“What does that mean?”
Tor laughs. It sounds foreign and unwelcome in this place.
“Hell if I know. It either means this is going to be the greatest thing I’ve ever done, or we’re all totally boned.”
James grins, and starts moving his wobbly legs, “You getting cold feet?”
Tor walks past him, “Who, me? Wouldn’t miss the end of the world for anything.”
The infiltration team walks past yet another deformed building, and a shiver runs though Matilda. The looming Pyramid in the distance lets her know they’re moving in the right direction, but it doesn’t make the journey any easier.
The Scry brushes strands of her floating silver hair out of her view. It’s hard enough trying to see with the goggles’ limited vision. Passing a nearby office, Matilda swears she’s seen this building before. In fact, she’s confident they’ve seen the same thing around them multiple times, and she lets out a frustrated sigh. Sean’s voice crackles in her headset.
“Trust me – it does change, darling. Just keep looking forward. If you must, stare at the feet of whoever’s in front of you. It will help. The Deep plays tricks on your mind, tries to get you riled up, make poor decisions. If you stay here too long, it starts projecting things you’re afraid of. Or lures you into one of these buildings.”
Dutifully staring at the Taciturn’s feet, she asks, “What’s inside them?”
“Nothing good. They say once you’re inside, you get lost in the corridors. Until you go mad.”
“And you turn into one of those… creatures?”
“Mm-hmm.”
Matilda stays focused on the Taciturn’s feet, but it feels like an hour has already passed, and the Pyramid is no closer. Frustrated, she glances to her left and notices a bookstore. It looks precisely like the place she found herself when she first awoke in Homestead. Slowly, she starts bearing to the left. Her feet start following an unaccountable urge to go inside the uncannily-familiar bookstore.
Sean is at her side, pushing her back towards the path.
“Steady on, there. Don’t want to wander off into the Deep alone.”
Matilda blinks, trying to refocus. She finds comfort in the sound of his voice.
“There’s only one man who’s done that, and he’d tell you it was a mistake.”
Matilda looks back at Sean, but the solider shakes his head and points forward. Looking again at James’ feet, Matilda asks, “Who’d be crazy enough to willingly spend time in here?”
In her peripheral vision, she sees Sean’s gloved hand point to Tor.
“To everyone else, he’s a living legend. You ask me, he’s never been the same after that incident. More melancholy after that.”
Matilda snorts. “Tor? He’s constantly smiling.”
Sean’s voice is somber.
“Aye. And drinking. I’d say he’s trying to forget what happened.”
Matilda reflects on the previous night. And drinking, indeed.
“How did it happen?”
Sean’s voice no longer plays through her comms. Instead, he whispers close at her side.
“It was by no choice of his, see. Couple of years ago, during one of the ‘non-aggression phases’ with Babylon, the Enclave focused its full attention on weeding us out. Hit one of the smaller outposts Tor was visiting. He had to jump into the Deep to escape with the survivors. Sure enough, Simmons sends in an elite hunter-killer team after him. They start picking off the stragglers that didn’t wander off. Soon Tor was by himself, playing cat and mouse with those bastards in this place.”
Matilda briefly glances up at the distorted city around her.
“But how did he get out?”
Sean shrugs.
“He won’t talk about it. All we know is, he made it out. And they didn’t.”
Before Matilda can ask another question, Jeong’s voice comes in over the squad’s intercom.
“Sir, you better take a look at this.”
The squad assembles around the female soldier’s position. Matilda arrives in time to see Tor studying the sensor in Jeong’s hand.
“How is that even possible? Unless…”
The Scry can hear the tension in his voice. Considering the story Sean just told her, Matilda feels her stomach turning.
“Almost there, everybody, we just got to pick up the pace.”
James steps forward.
“Is there something wrong, Tor?”
Tor taps Sean’s shoulder and motions for him to take point.
“Just some weird activity around us.”
Tor looks at Matilda.
“But don’t worry, we’ll get you there.”
James picks up his pace to match Tor’s. Matilda follows closely behind them.
“Alex, come on. If we’re walking into something, it’s better if we know about it.”
The Onikuma leader doesn’t slow down, but answers.
“Yeah, okay. I don’t know why, but there’s an unusual amount of activity around us. It’s like somebody suddenly opened a bunch of gateways into the Deep.”
James shifts his rifle’s weight in his hands.
“You mean like, they knew we were coming? Did Simmons just send in troops?”
Matilda’s breathing intensifies as the confidence in Tor’s voice erodes.
“I think so, but that’s not what I’m afraid of. With that many portals opening, they’re bound to have woken a nest or two.”
Matilda’s voice comes in over the comms. “‘Nests’?”
The Deep answers her question before Tor can.
In the distance, a high-pitched shriek pierces the eerie cityscape. Tor and his soldiers stop in their tracks and look in the direction of the sound. Another cry to the group’s left is matched a second later by several more behind them. More shrieks continue to join the unsettling chorus.
The sound is dreadful, disorienting. Matilda fights to keep herself grounded in the group.
A voice on her intercom bellows, “We have to run. NOW!”
Abandoning any pretense of stealth, the group sprints towards the Pyramid structure. Matilda can see that it’s closer, but she can also sense the crawling, terrible presence behind her. She centers her gaze on the person running in front of her, unsure at this point if it’s Sean or the other soldier, Jeong. Matilda pushes herself to run as fast as she can, but each step is harder than the last. Through her headset, James yells.
“Contact! Contact to the left!”
Tor says a word she doesn’t know, but it sends a chill down her spine just the same.
“LURKERS!”
Matilda can see the muzzle flashes from her team’s guns, but the weapons sound as if they’re underwater. The soldier in front of Matilda turns and frantically motions for her to continue running. Matilda bolts past her teammate while he, or she, lays down a line of fire behind them.
Over the comms, Tor tries to reestablish control.
“Everyone to that fountain block. Use it as cover. Sean, Jeong, leapfrog covering fire!”
Matilda sees the fountain and ignores everything else. The fountain. Just get to the fountain.
Gunfire erupts around her, and voices continue to blare into the comms, but she can’t hear any of it. Only her own ragged breathing and the rapid pounding of her heart.
Two members of the group have already reached the fountain. She’s so close, she can feel it. That’s why she doesn’t understand why the world around her has stopped moving. Or why the ground now rushes towards her face. Even with the impact, it takes her a moment to realize that she’s being pulled backwards.
James barely clears the wall of the fountain, whirls around, and sprays burst after burst at the oncoming horde of Lurkers. The pale, hairless, mutilated creatures, barely resembling human bodies, swarm into the plaza. He continues to put rounds into their deformed husks, frantically scanning the plaza for the rest of the squad. Next to him, Tor fires his weapon. Sean and Jeong take turns providing covering fire for the others. When James finally sees Matilda, the sight drives the air from his lungs.