They set off into the network of dimly-lit tunnels and connecting chambers as the dust settled from the tremendous explosion overhead.
Blake was beginning to feel like he was running on autopilot. He had no sense of time, no concept of what might be happening in the world around him. For all he knew, everyone back at headquarters might be dead or infected. For all he knew, Graves might be dead. As he walked down a narrow alcove of concrete with Nuzzi, he felt like the two of them might very well be the last two human beings in the entirety of everything.
He fought to shake off this feeling of isolation. It was dangerous on a battlefield, and this particular battlefield was unlike any other he had encountered before a few days ago. He stuck to the basics: check your corners, trust your instincts and be ready to open fire at the drop of a hat. Nuzzi was silent behind him as they stepped out of a narrow passageway, into a transitional room with five other doorways, all leading into tunnels that snaked away from them.
"Where to next?" Blake asked.
"Continue ahead, we're not far," Nuzzi replied.
"So...how'd you get involved in this?" Blake asked as they plunged into another poorly-lit corridor, moving ever closer to their destination.
Nuzzi sighed. "I was working for Genetic Incorporated Italy," he replied. "I'm top in my field...or so I'd like to believe, honestly. Gen Inc scouted me about a decade ago and I've worked on a number of projects since then. When word came down of a potential breakthrough in Antarctica, I have to admit, I was deeply intrigued. Especially with all the secrecy surrounding it and the sheer amount of money they offered me to drop everything and come down here."
"When was that, exactly?" Blake asked.
"About a month ago. They'd received word that some kind of alien craft had been discovered. It was all very compartmentalized, so I didn't know too much, but I managed to piece some things together. Like, we had cut a deal with the US Government. I just thought they were offering protection...I had no idea you poor bastards were essentially lured down here to stir up some trouble and then be captured for test subjects. When I first got here, I was placed at a weather station, then transferred to a submersible. I worked with a man named Faraday and we had quite the time determining the nature of the entity."
"I was there and I met Faraday. I think Whitley shot and killed him," Blake murmured.
"Hmm. A most unfortunate end."
"What have you learned about...what did you call it? The Cloud Virus? Is this thing actually alive or is it just an animal?"
"Well...those are good questions. We're not sure. We're not even sure what happens when someone is taken over by the infection. I believe that one of a few things happen. The first, and in my opinion, the most likely, is that the infection either slowly but surely takes over a person from within or, if it has the time, consumes the whole host and replaces it with a perfect, infection-controlled copy, and then the person who has been infected no longer exists. They are dead, and what we are interacting with is an alien entity that merely looks human. It walks, talks and sounds like a human, but it is merely a chameleon.
"Another possibility: the infection hides inside the human host without revealing itself, so that the human does not know it is infected until, suddenly, when it is threatened, the infection suddenly takes control and shoves the host's consciousness aside, taking control of the body. A third possibility is that a person knows they are infected...and tries to hide it, hoping that they can somehow fight it off. And, of course, there's no certainty. It could be a roll of the dice, all three of these things could happen, or perhaps there's some fourth option I haven't considered."
"I remember a comrade of mine got infected. He...he asked me to kill him, he said he could feel the infection. And then there was Whitley, who obviously was infected, but claimed he could somehow control it. Although I don't know if maybe the infection was letting him think that, or if it was just the infection talking, pretending to be Whitley..."
"Interesting," Nuzzi murmured. "We were working on some kind of vaccine or possibly even a cure but...I have to admit, I'm not sure it's possible. This entity is so complex, so ingenious...we could study it for a hundred years and possibly not have an answer."
"Any theories on where it came from? I mean, besides outer space."
"I'm not sure. There are a few possibilities. It could have stowed away on that ship, or it could have been in control of that ship. Though, given the photographs recovered from Dronning Maud of the creature dug up out of the ice, and given that it resembled the creatures we've encountered in their 'burst out' form, I believe something went wrong and the creature was forced to defend itself. Either it brought the ship down, or perhaps the crew brought the ship down, or...maybe they simply had some kind of mechanical problem. I never got to see the interior, unfortunately."
"I have another question. Is it one entity or many?"
"Personally...I'm not sure. It could go one way or another. It could be some kind of hive-mind, one intelligence remotely controlling all of the various entities through some kind of telepathy. Or each could be its own, individual animal. Then there's your other question...is it alive? I'm afraid I can't answer that, either. Personally, I think it's too perfect not to have been engineered, maybe by the aliens who flew the craft, maybe by others. But that doesn't necessarily mean it's not alive. I believe it would be technically possible to create life, to create sentient, self-aware beings.
"Then again, it may just be some highly-adaptive virus that simply mimics sentience, but is in fact operating on pre-programmed instincts or instructions. Like an illness, a virus or a disease. In that scenario it isn't alive, but clearly it's very adept at multiplying itself."
"Jeez," Blake muttered, "I feel like I know less now than before I started asking questions."
"Yes...I'm afraid we've stumbled into an extremely complicated situation. The only good news is that there doesn't necessarily seem to be a moral dilemma: either we kill these entities or they consume and effectively kill us."
"Now there's a bottom line I can understand," Blake replied.
"Ah...here we are."
They came through a doorway into a much larger, open area. It reminded Blake of a subway station. They'd emerged at the back of a large, open platform dotted with abandoned supply crates. Dead ahead was a flat-car tram with a cubicle at the front resting on some tracks that extended away in either direction into the darkness.
"We're in luck," Nuzzi said.
"Yeah, let's hurry the hell up," Blake replied.
Even as they began making for the tram, they were attacked from several angles. From the shadows to their left and right, a trio of humanoid Walkers, a dozen Scuttlers and Blake's awful old friend the Bulldog Walker came charging out.
"Shit! Open fire!" Blake snapped. "Hit the Scuttlers and stay back!"
Nuzzi responded with gunfire, blasting a pair of Scuttlers off their feet in sprays of black gore. Blake charged forward, switching to his flamethrower, and brought the cone of red-orange flames sweeping across the Bulldog Walker and one of the humanoid Walkers, a hideous thing with milky-white skin, no face and a huge crimson claw with a serrated edge. Both of them lit up like torches and began coming for him faster. Blake dove out of the way and came up with his MP-5. He sprayed a quartet of Scuttlers that were coming at him, put them down and then ducked, crying out, narrowly avoiding a fifth Scuttler that had leaped for him.
He tracked it and put it down, then did a quick survey of the scene and dove out of the way again as the Bulldog Walker, still aflame, charged him. Raising his MP-5, he emptied the rest of the magazine into the big, burly thing and finally put it down. The second Walker had gone down on its own. The other two had split up.
"Uh, Blake!" Nuzzi called. "A little help!"
One Walker was coming for Nuzzi, the other for Blake. Cursing, his heart hammering in his chest, Blake lit his Walker up and then sprinted towards the other. Nuzzi had finished off the Scuttlers and now was pouring fire into the hideously malformed thing advancing on him. It was one of the ones that had a human torso for a tail, dragging the silently screaming half-man across the floor. Blake raced forward and used up the last of the fuel in his canister to hose the awful beast down. It turned towards him and took a swipe.
Blake leaped back...almost into the waiting arms of the other aflame Walker. Cursing, he backed away from both of them. They were both advancing on him now, as he had earned their ire. Switching to his MP-5, he slammed a fresh magazine home and went through every last round in it putting down the pair of Walkers.
As they fell, so did the silence, descending across the area like a heavy, invisible gas, broken only by the crackling of the flames.
"Well, damn," Nuzzi said. "That was intense."
"Yeah," Blake replied, getting his breath back. "Now let's get out of here."
They made their way across the platform, but as they approached the tram, something caught his eye. A black case abandoned on the floor, burst open, supplies scattered. Survival gear, it looked like. All kinds of survival gear. Blake crouched, grabbed more ammo for his MP-5, a canister of fuel, quickly reloaded both of his guns and then snagged the pair of test kits he'd spied still in the case. He stood and turned, holding them.
"Time for a test, doc," he said.
Nuzzi frowned, staring at the tests kits, then sighed and nodded. "Fair enough."
Blake went first, sticking the needle in his arm and drawing some of his blood, then holding it up. He waited, his pulse rising again, thinking about what Nuzzi had said. What if he was infected but he didn't know it?
A long moment went by and…
Nothing. There was nothing. He sighed softly and tossed the kit into the darkness, hearing it shatter somewhere. He then carefully passed the next kit to Nuzzi and took a few steps back, covering him with the flamethrower. Blake watched intently as the white-haired doctor stuck himself in the arm, winced and drew the blood. Moment of truth...Nuzzi held the test kit up, staring at it intently. A second passed, then another one, and a third...both of them sighed softly in relief. The kit was inert and silent. Nuzzi was human.
"Let's go," Blake said, heading for the tram.
The pair of them got onboard and Nuzzi stepped into the conductor's cubicle, fired up the tram and launched them into the darkness.
Nuzzi was right: the tram took them almost the whole way there. They ran into a partially collapsed tunnel not far from HQ. While they'd made their way through the darkened tunnels, Blake had grilled Nuzzi for information on Gen Inc's operation down here. Besides the biological research facility, there was a large prison complex, a medical complex, a support station and, perhaps most importantly, an airfield, which was supposed to serve as backup headquarters if the biological research complex ever fell.
Which made it their number one target.
Once they were forced off of the tram, Blake led Nuzzi through a series of tunnels and corridors before finally emerging back out in the main tunnel. He still had no idea how close the soldiers were to initiating Operation: Burn. It could be a whole day away or they might have mere minutes left before the bombs went off and turned the whole underground into a living hell. Not knowing was starting to drive him crazy.
"We aren't too far away now," Blake said as they wandered back into familiar territory. This wasn't all that far away from the area where he'd first surfaced to help Chase.
"Good, we need to act fast. I imagine that our stunt put Graves on the defensive and I know he had several irons in the fire, none of them good. What we did probably made him push up whatever timetable he was working," Nuzzi replied.
"Great," Blake muttered.
He froze as he heard something up ahead, what sounded like talking. Nuzzi froze with him. They listened intently. Blake tried to sort it out, determining whether or not they were allies or enemies. What eventually sold him on the idea was the manner in which they were speaking. Their voices were too...flat, too dead, too cold and detached. It wasn't definitive, but it was enough to inspire more than a little caution on his part.
"Stay here," he whispered, then began to creep forward.
Nuzzi stayed put, though he didn't look happy about it. Blake didn't blame him. Working his way through the ugly maze of wreckage and derelict supply crates and vehicles, Blake crept ever closer to the mysterious voices. They grew louder and sounded impatient. He quietly made sure his MP-5 was ready and kept going until he managed to find a narrow space where two large metal crates almost, but not quite, met, giving him a view of the open area beyond. A quartet of men in white camo gear and gasmasks were standing guard while a fifth one crouched against the wall. They were complaining, wanting to get out of there.
Blake listened to them for a little bit, seeing if he could pick up any intel from them, but they weren't really saying much. They all seemed jumpy. He came very, very close to rolling a grenade into their midst. It would be easy enough, but...something made him stop. His instincts told him not to and, well, he'd gotten this far listening to his combat instincts, so instead he worked his way back out. Part of him wanted to just open fire from the slot, but he figured it would be too easy to lose track of the hostiles if they got away, which almost certainly at least some of them would, and then were would he end up?
Trapped in a maze with hostiles.
So, he worked his way back around to a larger opening, dropped to one knee and aimed carefully around the smashed engine of a troop transport flatbed. He waited a few seconds, making sure none of them were preparing to leave, then he opened fire and sprayed their position with red hot lead. As it turned out, he had nothing to worry about. All five of them went down under his deadly rain of bullets, taking an entire magazine to go down. When it was over, he hastily reloaded and listened, waiting to see if backup would arrive.
After about twenty seconds, he quickly returned through the maze, retrieved Nuzzi and then brought him back to the open area.
"Check them for ammo and supplies," Blake said as he approached the area where the fifth trooper had been crouched.
Nuzzi grunted a response and got to it. As Blake closed in on that particular section of wall, he felt a cold stone settle into his gut. There was a square, black device at the base of the wall. On top of it was a screen with numbers in dangerous crimson numerals.
A bomb.
"Oh fuck," he muttered.
"What?" Nuzzi replied, straightening up and jogging over to join him. "Oh...fuck, indeed," he murmured.
The screen gave them about ten minutes. Nuzzi glanced at his wrist, muttered to himself and then hit Blake's shoulder. "Let's move, I've got a watch, I can keep track."
"Run," Blake replied.
They started running.
They navigated a series of tight alcoves, burned wreckage and derelict vehicles. Around them, the tunnel was alive with dark, alien life. Thing beasts growled, lurking in the shadows, but Blake didn't have time for them. Five minutes later, he and Nuzzi were hammering on the door that led to the underground headquarters.
A few seconds later, the door was yanked open and two MP-5s and a flamethrower were pointed out. MacReady, North and a man Blake didn't recognize were on the other ends of those weapons. "Blake!" MacReady cried, lowering his weapon some. "We thought you were dead."
"No time to explain, bombs in the tunnels, have to get everyone out," Blake replied, panting.
"Shit, test them," MacReady replied. The men backed up and Blake and Nuzzi were cautiously let in. North closed the door behind them while the other man produced a pair of test kits. Both Blake and Nuzzi were covered with the weapons while they hastily tested themselves. Once they'd proven their humanity, MacReady stepped forward.
"How much time?" he asked.
Nuzzi glanced at his watch. "Four minutes," he replied.
"Fuck!" MacReady snapped. "Grab whatever you can and get topside, warn the others." He looked back at Blake. "How big is this bomb?"
"Bombs," Blake corrected. "Everywhere underground. The whole tunnel."
"Crap, all right, get up and out and get to Rothera Station!" MacReady called.
The next several minutes were a confused, incoherent mess as Blake helped the men gather whatever guns, ammo and supplies he could. After he loaded himself down, he joined them in climbing up and out of the subterranean base. They emerged in the abandoned base on the surface, where even more men were evacuating.
"This base isn't very secure, I'm not sure it'll survive, but that Way Station you found Chase in, we cut that off from the underground, reinforced it. It should survive the blast. I've been moving men and supplies there for a while now...what the fuck happened to you?" MacReady asked as they moved along with the evacuation.
"Long story, tell you when there's time," Blake replied.
MacReady nodded tightly. They burst outside, into a haze of snow. Blake joined several other men by getting into a tractor with Nuzzi. MacReady got behind the wheel, started the engine and took off, pushing the tractor as fast as it could go.
They'd made it perhaps a hundred feet when the ground began to shake.
Blake zipped up his brand new coat and took a moment to study himself in the mirror.
He looked like hell, felt like it, too, but he'd had another break, albeit a short one. MacReady told him he'd been missing for about twelve hours now, and in that half-day time frame, the man hadn't been lollygagging around. Using the men Blake had rescued, as well as a handful of others he'd rescued from abandoned outposts, either the remnants of the Special Forces teams Whitley had called down or runaways from Gen Inc, he'd cobbled together quite a little guerrilla force. Taking the initiative, they'd hit the prison complex and tripled their numbers, turning the little little movement into practically a standing army.
After that, MacReady had been coordinating hit and run movements on all of Gen Inc's buildings, gathering men, weapons and vehicles wherever he could. Blake had to admit, he was genuinely impressed.
Then again, they were motivated.
After getting to what MacReady had dubbed Rothera Station, ensuring the base had survived the blast and going through a mass testing, Blake had taken a much needed break. He'd gotten his wounds tended to by Weldon, scarfed down a big meal and then had taken a long, hot shower. Now he was just finishing dressing.
It was time to end this.
Blake left the bathroom and stepped out into a corridor on the second floor of Rothera Station. The place was abuzz with activity. He had to admit...it made him nervous. They made it a point to test every hour on the hour now, which slowed down productivity, but...well, what else could they do? Even so, Blake couldn't help but wonder if any of these men he shared this base with were infected. He was at least glad to see that everyone respected the threat: no one strayed too close to each other. All it would take is one touch and then that could be the end.
He moved through the base, navigating the hallways until he arrived at what MacReady referred to as the War Room, which had once been the foreman's office. They'd cleared most of it out, set up a communications center in one corner, shoved a couple of desks against the left wall and, along the far back wall, erected a huge map of the area that was constantly being updated by hand as new information came in.
MacReady and Nuzzi were there, so were several others. They stood before the map, listening to Nuzzi talk. They didn't look happy.
"Blake," MacReady said as he stepped up to the map. "We've got a problem."
"What else is new?" Blake muttered in response. "What's the situation?"
"This is where we're at: we've got Gen Inc and Graves on the run. This airfield is their last refuge. Based on comms traffic, we know a few things. The first is that they've cut off communications with the rest of the world for anyone on this continent that isn't Gen Inc. If we want to warn everyone else and enact a quarantine around Antarctica, we've got to take them down. The second is that they've called in a contingent of troops for backup and they're going to be here in about twelve hours. The third and final bit of news, which is good and bad, is that as far as we've been able to tell, no one and nothing has left this continent, at least not from Gen Inc. The bad news is that they're preparing to fly a huge shipment of Thing creatures back to the States."
"So we're attacking the airfield then?" Blake asked.
"Yes. This is going to be our last gambit, because if we don't take that airfield and get the word out, then I imagine that when that backup gets here, we're going to be first on their kill list. I'm going to be leading the main assault force and we're going to be hitting them dead on. Blake, you're going to take a team and hit a SAM site, take it over and use that surface-to-air missile to take down the plane. There's going to be a few other teams hitting the airfield from several different directions. Unfortunately, due to the state of the underground tunnels, we can't use the 'come up from below' trick anymore. This is an all-out surface war. It's an all-in kind of situation."
"Got it," Blake replied, studying the map.
"Select your equipment and your team, then prepare to mount up. We leave in twenty minutes," MacReady said.