Nothing about the situation was okay. Nothing. The tunnel had brought up more questions that it had answered. And there were no more answers to be found in the tunnel. That was all before Vera had tried to contact John through the comms. John had still been inside the dig when Vera had tried to raise him. When John tried to respond, all he had been able to hear was a series of screams and collisions. He all but stabbed the code into the nanowall controls. The second the wall dematerialized, John realized how grave their situation had been. He walked through the wall and entered the infirmary.
All at once, the magnitude struck him. The infirmary was in shambles. The curtains had been ripped from the ceiling. Several gurneys had been upturned. Divots and cracks lined the walls of the room. Tools were scattered throughout the room. But the more evident of the situation, was the noxious smell that filled his lungs. John had never smelt something more vile. It was a putrid scent of decaying flesh, rancid blood, and melting ozone. John stopped several steps from the nanowall and surveyed everything.
Stijn entered behind him. "Shit. What happened?"
"A number of things." Merik answered. He was standing at the main console.
Sam stood beside him, watching the screen. Vera sat on the desk in front of him, staring down at the floor. One of her knees was bent over the desks surface, while the other hung down above the floor. Each one of them bore the appearance that something had happened. Merik had a trail of blood running down the back of his neck that stained his shirt. Sam's sleeve and wrist were covered in black blood. Her hair hung at odd angles from her pony and her face held visible signs that she had been crying up to a few minutes ago. Her right cheek held a black stain that had been attempted to be cleaned away. Vera's front was also covered in blood, black blood. Her neck was heavily bruised, nearly matching the shade of her shirt. A trail of blood ran down the back of her neck, red blood. Her own. Her boot knife was clutched tightly in her left hand while it was settled on top of her knee. Neither she, nor Sam found the strength to look up.
"Start talking." Stijn said.
Merik looked up from the console. He motioned to his left. Stijn and John followed his gesture and looked. Their eyes instantly fell on the dead, mutated, bodies of Foster and Wilson. "We were...attacked by your men, Stijn."
Stijn frowned, taking in the disgusting mutation. "What the fuck?"
"They mutated." Vera said. Her voice was barely over a whisper.
"I can see that. Stijn stated. He walked over to Sam and looked her over.
"She means the strain mutated." Sam replied. She looked up at them. "The Chromosome inside them mutated."
The room fell silent. John stared down at the mutated soldiers. Their half mutated face were covered in blood, one held the tools used to kill them still embedded in its skull while the other had three knives embedded in its face. The blood around the wounds was black and think and had oozed down their faces. Their bodies had been fused by a strange tentacle. He could see the bulge of the tentacle throughout their entire body. But when John spotted the gaping hole in Wilson's chest, he froze. He'd seen that same wound in his dreams, in Vera. John staggered back from the bodies, bumping loudly into one of the gurney's, startling everyone but Vera.
"What the hell happened to them?" John demanded. He walked over to the desk and looked over to Sam and Merik.
Sam stared at him, her eyes full of fear and guilt. She turned to Merik. "Tell him."
Merik swallowed and looked up at John. "What Vera said was correct. The chromosome in Foster and Wilson mutated. It was the chromosome mutation that caused this drastic mutation."
"How?"
"The creatures that were attached to them." Sam answered. "After Merik removed the one from Foster, he examined it."
"When the creature latched onto his face, it forced a tube down his face that supplied oxygen." Merik explained.
Stijn nodded. "Right, it was keeping them alive."
"Yes. I believed it was a defensive tactic, a way to disable the threat until their nest could be relocated." he continued. "I couldn't have been more wrong. Inside that tube were three smaller ones. Two of which were used to supply oxygen."
"What was the third one for?" John asked, but he already had a feeling.
Merik took a deep breath. "The third was implanted into the chest cavity, where it laid...something inside of the men. What it laid, theses...eggs, when they hatched they released something into the body which, in turn, caused the mutation."
John looked back at Foster and Wilson. "Can you find out what caused it?"
"I'm analyzing the eggs as we speak, but I've never seen anything like this before." Merik said.
"Wait," Stijn said. He turned toward Vera. "Vera was in the nest with Foster and Wilson. Why hasn't she mutated with them?"
John looked to Vera, who still refused to look up. He noticed Sam looked away as well.
"She had something on her side." Merik answered. "Apparently these creatures have the decency to leave an expecting mother alone."
Vera winced.
"What?"
"Merik!"
John stared at Vera. Had he heard that correctly? Was Merik hinting that Vera was...could she really be...
"Bullshit!" Stijn snapped.
Merik shook his head. "After you soldier's were subdued, Sam and Vera wondered the same as you, Stijn. So we decided to run a bio scan of Vera and found that-"
"That I am pregnant." Vera said. She looked up from the floor. "About ten weeks from my due date...in fact."
John closed his eyes and covered his face in his hands. This was not what he was expecting. Not in a million years.
"It's the same reason why her healing was slowed so dramatically." Sam explained. "The body focused on the babies survival first then hers."
"I think they've got it, Sam." Vera said. "We have a big problem now."
"I don't understand how the chromosome mutated up here." Stijn said. "Nothing new was added to the environment."
"Nothing necessarily needs to be added to the environment for the chromosome to mutate." Vera explained. "Look at the cold, there are millions of strains, all with the basic code for it, but each one is its own. Mutated on its own. Apparently C24 has found a way to adapt as well."
"What did you find in the nest chamber?" Sam asked.
Stijn motioned to Foster and Wilson. "Them, a whole lot of creatures, but nothing else."
At that, Vera finally looked up. "Nothing?"
"Nothing." John answered. "Whatever you saw in the tunnel was long gone by the time we got there."
"That gives us a whole new line of problems." Vera said. " These creatures triggered a mutation from the inside of Foster and Wilson. It didn't just infect them, it caused their twenty-fourth chromosome to mutate. It's an infection that'll take everyone, even super humans."
"We have to evacuate the facility." Sam said. "Get the refugees back to earth for their protection."
Stijn shook his head." That's easier said than done, Sam."
"They don't have a choice anymore." John said. "Alert the station; in one hour, every person is to be in the ARC chamber, or back on earth. I don't care what you tell them, but get them back to earth."
Stijn nodded pulled out his comm. He turned and walked toward the door.
"I'll finish my analysis before leaving." Merik said. "We'll need all the information we can get on this mutation."
"I'll help." Sam said. The two immediately return their attention to the computer.
Vera launched herself off the desk and walked down the infirmary toward her gurney. John silently followed her. The tension between was high, already thick enough to cut. Neither said a word nor looked at the other as the reached the last gurney. Vera lifted her foot and stepped on the gurney she slid her knife back into her boot and dropped it back onto the floor. She swallowed nervously.
"You gonna say something?" she asked. Her voice wavered.
"What do you want me to say?" John asked. His voice low and cold.
"Something." Vera answered. "Anything. Yell. Scream. But say something, John."
"How long have you known?" he deadpanned.
Vera spun around to face. Whatever she had expected, it certainly hadn't been that. "I didn't."
John said nothing and turned away from her. He started toward the nanowall.
Vera followed after him. She grabbed his arm and turned him back around to face her. "you honestly think that I knew about this?"
"I wouldn't put it past you." John snapped. "You've made yourself a reputation for hiding things."
His words stung deep, but Vera tried to push past them. "Yes, I kept things from you. From the unit. I had my reasons for that and you damn well know it."
"Right." John snorted bitterly. "Because every person would hide a dislocated shoulder injury."
"This is nothing like that." Vera replied.
"You're right, it's not!" John yelled. "It's whole lot bigger, Vera!"
Sam and Merik both looked over in John and Vera's direction, but neither soldier seemed to care.
"You expect me to believe that this whole time, you never knew you were pregnant?" he demanded.
"I didn't!" Vera defended.
"Bullshit!" John snapped. "Ten weeks away. Ten weeks!"
"I would never keep something like this a secret." Vera pleaded.
"How the hell am I supposed to trust you?" John demanded. "You've been lying to me for the past four years. Injuries, facts, deaths. You've kept them all from me and you expect me to trust you."
"Have I given you any reason to distrust me these past few months?" Vera asked.
"Months isn't going to make up for years of lies." John replied. "Not when its second nature to you."
Nothing less of a bullet could have hurt more than the words John had spat into her face. The entire room was silent. Sam watched John and Vera with a heavy heart. She wanted to tell her brother he was being an asshole, that Vera didn't know until today, but after witnessing the argument, she realized that no matter what she told him, John wasn't going to believe her. It was that same painful conclusion that Vera came to. She could explain that those lies were for their protection just as it was for hers. She could tell him that he didn't need to delve into her past, that it was hers to know. But the cold, infuriated stare that he gave her, told her it would all end the same way; John would continue to believe that she had known about the pregnancy the entire time. And worse, that she would not have told him. This was a battle she was never going to win and that knowledge was more painful than having everything she's done thrown back at her face.
"Vy oshibayetes' ." she whispered.
John shook his head. "Ne v etot raz ."
Suddenly the lights shut off. Everyone looked up at the lights. Emergency lights initiated, illuminating the room with an eerie red glow. An electronic alarm sounded throughout the room, echoing loudly. Sam's eyes grew large with alarm.
"Shit." she muttered. She sprinted from the console.
"What's going on?" John asked.
"It's a Code Red." Sam answered. She sprinted for the door. "It means one of the living blocks was shut down."
John and Vera gave one another a brief panicked glance before sprinting after Sam, their personal dilemma's, momentarily forgotten.
okay...hope that wasn't too cliché there. oh the drama and horror to come! MWAHAHAHAHAHAHA! man i'm psycho. hope you guys enjoyed this chapter! not sure when the next one will be up. hopefully this weekend.
translations:
You're wrong. Vy oshibayetes' .
Not this time. Ne v etot raz .