[1]
"I am going to die."
Gary Sanderson said the words aloud, as he laid in the middle of Checkpoint 6, inside a building that had crumbled about an hour ago. He'd gotten lucky. There was a thick piece of rebar in front of him that was keeping most of the weight of the ceiling off of him.
That was nice.
He could hear footsteps outside the crumbled building. He could hear footsteps outside. Perhaps a dozen pairs of them.
That wasn't so nice.
The chaingun was sitting to his left. It was wedged under a piece of debris. He could probably move it with the augmented strength of the Zone Armor.
Probably.
"Breaks over Roach." he said to himself. Call of Duty—that stuff was the shit. Though he hadn't really played any of the games after Modern Warfare 2. As for his nickname…that was an old joke with his squad mates. His deceased squad mates.
Roach felt like crying. But he would not.
[2]
The search occurred at 1200. Noontime. With the sun shining on a cool fall day. They came into the Red Zone, Checkpoint 6. Roach was in an Orca Carryall with his other ten mates. They were flying low, barely fifty feet above ground; and Roach had gotten a good view of the area.
Checkpoint 6 was not really a checkpoint, but a research facility. It'd been here that GDI scientists had done a significant amount of research in sonic technology during the Second Tiberian War. Kane had been defeated. The Tiberian Sun had not risen. The research facility had been too close to a Yellow Zone, which had had a Nod research lab of its own.
The Nod lab had focused on using Tiberium as a weapon; but one day had blown up like a gigantic green volcano. Tiberium had gone everywhere in a wide swath that spanned for miles.
Now it was all Red.
Roach stared down at the area. Much like the Midwest, where he'd grown up, Checkpoint 6 was naturally a forest land in most areas, and marshlands in the rest.
Not anymore. Massive beds of green crystal were everywhere, glowing faintly. The ground itself was barren and grey, bringing to mind the scar tissue you might see on a pale and injured man.
Checkpoint 6 had eight buildings in total. The main research lab was a seven-story building in the center. A gigantic Tiberium crystal split it in half from top to bottom. The building was flanked by more large green crystals, rose up like redwood trees.
It struck Roach as beautiful—in a sick kind of way. The shine of the crystals brought to mind images of power and death.
He knew better than to say so to his mates. Turning to them, he could make out their grim faces behind their Zone Armors.
Sgt. Barbara Cutter, the leader of the unit, was a Zone Raider. She armed with a medium range laser cannon mounted on her wrist. It would be great if there were any Nod vehicles or heavy units about.
Privates Yatson, Coors, and Holmes were fellow Zone Enforcers. Much like Roach, they were armed with the Andretti Chainsaw. The Chainsaw machine gun fired tungsten rounds, which were good for slicing through the armor of the cybernetic infantry Nod had begun to use in earnest. Coors had painted the words "Blind Faith" on his machine gun. He said it was because nothing killed Devouts faster.
Roach was a Catholic, and didn't think that was funny.
Corporal Howards and Anderson had cannons and were very unintuitively labeled as Zone Troopers. The lone Zone Defender on the squad was Ruth Nancy, which everyone in the squad was fond of calling Nancy Reagan. Reagan had twin rocket launchers strapped to the shoulders of her own armor.
Of the squad, Cutter's Raider Armor was the slimmest. The Trooper, Enforcer, and Defender Armors all had similar builds otherwise.
"Okay squad listen up!" the sergeant said. "We've been getting reports of Nod activity in the area. However, our primary target is the research building in the middle of the checkpoint. The target is a brown briefcase with the letter 'L' stamped on the side. The briefcase is in a safe at the very bottom of the structure. Level B2."
Reagan asked: "How do we even know it's still intact."
"It will be." Cutter said. "The safe is made of the material of the Scrin ship that McNeil guy found in the Second Tiberian war."
"Wait a second sarge." Pvt. Holmes asked. "So the safe is made of indestructible material right? How would they be able to shape it in that case? Nothing would be able to cut it or bend it."
"Hey Danny?" Cutter asked.
"What?"
"Shut the fuck up."
[3]
The Orca Carryall lowered itself to twenty feet above ground. The pilot found a piece of ground that was barren and leeched-looking but otherwise flat and stable.
This was the mostly fun part.
"Alright Wolf squad!" Cutter said. "Let's move out."
Orca Carryalls used to require ropes for the passengers to slide down. They still used them for training, where it was stressed time and time again that you wouldn't always have your suit with you when you needed it. But out here, in general, the Zone Armors were enough.
More than enough.
Cutter jumped first. As she fell through the air, she did a little spin move. A slight twirl. Just enough that she landed facing the same direction that she'd started in.
Roach was second to land. Holmes and Coors behind him. They each readied their chainguns and started scanning the area. In front of them was the building. To the left was what used to a be fork in the road. On their right was a bed of Tiberium. It was good they didn't need to worry about walking in the shit anymore.
Yatson landed behind Holmes, and behind Yatson landed Reagan.
"Negative movement." Holmes and Coors said together. They were looking toward the nearby field of Tiberium.
"Negative movement on my side." Reagan said. She was looking at the squads 6 o'clock.
"Negative here too." Howards said. He and Anderson were looking at the squad's 9.
"Alright." Cutter said. During missions she had a slightly hushed voice. "Let's get moving. Keep on your toes."
When they made it to the front of the building, there was a sudden earthquake. It started out low—certainly nothing worse than the one Roach had experienced in California once—and the squad kept moving, but much slower now.
Then there was a sudden spike in movement. Roach's feet wobbled under him dangerously, the Chainsaw shook in his hands. It was belt-fed, with the belt of bullets swaying between the gun itself and the ammo pack on Roach's back.
Cries of "whoa!" and "holy shit!" went through the squad, ranging in volume. Private Anderson was the loudest. He lost his balance and tipped over slowly, with more than enough time for his hands to pinwheel through the air in a sad attempt to avoid falling.
He sat down hard on the ground. The sound was metallic and thick and seemed to ring through the Red Zone.
"Jesus!" Anderson cried out.
The sergeant turned and looked at the private with narrowed eyes. "Shut your mouth Andy. The rest of you can shut up too."
Shut up they did. They waited with their eyes constantly scanning the area. The earthquake was already starting to die down, into a low rumble. That was good.
Soon…the earth was still again.
"Think it was just a fluke tremor."
Cutter shrugged as much as her armor would let her. "Probably. Maybe. There were no reports of quake activity in this neck of the woods…or barrens I should say."
"D-d-did you just crack a joke sarge?" Anderson asked.
"I guess so." the Zone Raider strode over to him and extended a hand. Anderson stared stupidly at it.
"Any damn time now sweetheart." Cutter said, in her low hissing voice.
Anderson took it.
"I sure hope that was the last one for a long while." Howard said.
"You can say that again." Anderson's voice was shaking. His cannon weapon (a Firefly 2) had fallen to the ground; Anderson stooped to pick it up.
"Holy shit!" Coors cried suddenly.
Everyone snapped to him. "What?" Cutter asked.
"I saw something in one of the windows. Fourth floor."
Every machinegun, cannon, and rocket launcher turned toward the building.
"I didn't see anything." Howard muttered. "And I was looking right at the building."
"Were you looking at the fourth floor?" Roach asked.
"No, but I was looking at the whole damn building."
"Shut it." Cutter said. "We breach the building. Roach. Holmes. Anderson. You guys first. Me and Yatson will cover you. Coors. Howard. Reagan, you guys pick out a floor and keep scanning it.
"Affirmatives" and "rogers" and "yessirs" went through the group. It wasn't much, but Roach felt a bit at ease. Order from chaos. That's all you could hope for as a human being: squeezing a bit of order out of all the chaos.
[4]
The ground floor of the lab was a simple lobby structure. The tiles had once been stark white in color, and was now only a faded grey due to wear and tear. At the end of it were four series of elevators. Each end was flanked by a flight of stairs. The one on the right had its door laying on the floor in front of it.
Tiberium crystals freckled the lobby here and there. They glowed faintly, providing less light than one might think. The Enforcer Armors came with a flashlight just above the head. It tracked where there eyes went, but only in a limited arc in front of them. All other Zone Armors had small lights below their visors.
In the middle of the floor was a rectangular receptionist desk. A long and flat shard of Tiberium was poking out from the side of the desk nearest them. It stood on end—a giant green exclamation point that was only slightly tilted to one side.
"We take the stairs." Cutter said. "Elevators aren't working."
They were halfway across the room when the elevators started working. The displays above them—above all of them—were suddenly lit up. The number 4 was on all of them.
As the Zone soldiers watched, the displays all changed to 3.
Roach gulped. The noise was deafeningly loud.
"Everyone into cover." Cutter said.
There wasn't much position to get into, other than the receptionist desk with the Tiberium exclamation point sticking out of it. The squad ducked as best they could.
The threes on the displays changed to twos. Roach felt his finger put an inch of pressure on his chaingun.
The elevators were on the ground floor. A voice came from the speakers flanking each of the elevator displays. It was a calm woman's voice.
First floor. Going up. It was a calm woman's voice. It sounded a bit like Cutter's voice, but more sophisticated. And to agree with the voice's statement, the UP arrows on the right sides of each elevator glowed white.
The elevator doors all slide apart. It took all of Roach's willpower to not fire immediately. He stopped himself by the knowledge that it could've been a civilian, no matter how small the odds. The last civilian survivor had been picked up nearly a decade ago.
It wasn't a civilian.
In each elevator was a quivering mass of black flesh. On their tops of their bodies were Tiberium shards. Near the middle of the mass were pairs of green lights in the shape of circles. It took Roach about two seconds—two seconds too long—to realize they were pairs of eyes.
"Tiberian fiends!" Cutter shouted.
Roach had completely depressed his trigger before the sentence was all the way out of Cutter's mouth. The chaingun roared to life, and its sound was loud and long. Flowers of red-yellow light bloomed from the muzzle of his gun.i
The squad all opened fire. An entire wall of yellow light spread out in front of Roach and his squad. A thin blue line cut through all of it: Cutter's laser cannon.
The fiends jerked and trembled in the elevator. The fiend in Elevator 2 died instantly, its head was there one second; the next second it was on the floor in front of it. It sagged to the ground, its ass pointed toward the elevator's ceiling.
The fiend in Elevator 1 was hit with the cannons of Howard and Anderson. They were not explosive rounds, but armor-piercing slugs that made no real explosion. The struck fiend was sent into the back of the elevator hard enough to crack it. What was left to hit the ground was smoking and unrecognizable.
The fiend in Elevator 4 opened its mouth wide. Roach had time to think of all those cartoons were the characters jaw hit the floor. Its black teeth had a queer shine. It had no tongue. In the middle of its tongue-like mouth, green suddenly swelled up.
It fired a beam of pure Tiberian energy.
The blast took Sergeant Cutter right in the middle of her visor. Zone Armors could take Tiberium energy in close—but indirect—proximity. It could take direct contact with the green and even the blue crystals. What it couldn't take was extremely concentrated Tiberium blasts.
But, to be fair, there was no material on the planet that could.
Cutter's visor exploded with a strangely wet sound. The laser firing stopped immediately, and her hands flew to her face. Clutching at it.
The sergeant twisted first to the left, then to the right. Her helmet was sizzling. Green smoke, slightly green and sparking, curled up to the ceiling.
"Fuck!" Howard shrieked. "They got her. They got Sergeant Cutter!"
"Keep firing!" Reagan yelled.
Their fire swept across the elevators, pausing at the fiend in the third elevator, homing in on the fiend spitting out energy. It fired another blasted. This one whistled above all their heads. That was because the combined fire of the Zone Soldiers made it do a backflip in the elevator.
It fell onto the ground headfirst, in a tattered heap.
The fiend in the third elevator didn't try firing. It tried rushing. The fire from the Zone Soldiers swept back to the left. The fiend lunged for Holmes, who'd been stupidly inching himself forward. Roach thought later that Holmes might not have been aware of what he was doing.
It didn't matter. The Tiberian fiend sliced through the air. It wasn't like in the movies, where blades made audible sounds as they cut through the air. The claws of the fiend made no sound at all.
Not until it cracked through Holmes' armor like it wasn't even there.
The corporal let out a small, low, "Ucghk!" and fell down backwards.
The fiend had just enough time to yank its claws out, and turn to Roach. Then a cannon shot from Howard popped one of the fiend's front legs off. The fiend was sent skating across the ground for about five feet, then it started to roll. Thick yellow blood spurted out from the amputated stump.
Cutter finally sank to her knees. She was like that for a second, looking very much like a person kneeling for confession. Then she went facedown onto the ground.
The battle had lasted less than fifteen seconds, according to Roach's clock in his HUD.
Yatson ran to Cutter, then to Holmes. When it came to GDI squads, there were no designated medics. They all had medical training, but Yatson had been an actual surgeon before his stint into the military.
But by the time he got his medical equipment out, Sergeant Cutter was already dead. And Holmes was about to join her.