Ten minutes and a dozen failed timelines later, Thomas finally realized that he had no choice, he was going to have to risk pushing ahead without using his powers. He also came to the worrying conclusion that it was almost certainly the Family, somehow, who were behind the neutering of his ability, which now went to void almost instantly no matter what he did. It must have been them all along, which raised a number of questions, such as how they were doing it, whether it was intentional, and whether they'd actually been working against him right from the beginning.
When he added that nugget of information to everything else he knew, it dawned on him to his horror and fury that for all intents and purposes he'd been manipulated and herded into locking himself in his base, for weeks if not months leading up to this point. All the failed plans, all the things that at the time had seemed accidental or directed at someone else, they'd all been part of someone else's plan to end up right where he was now.
The Family connection to the DWU, and the city, their interactions with the PRT, all the public works… All to get at him.
Why? What had attracted their attention to him? And how long ago had it happened? Was Cauldron involved somehow?
The last question he decided after some thought was probably not true, since he'd gotten the impression that the authorities in general were completely blindsided by the appearance of the Family, as much as he himself had been. The internal PRT communications had shown a lot of confusion and curiosity about the reptiles, where they came from, what they were doing, and why they were doing it. He still couldn't work out why no one had done anything more than watch, though.
Shaking his head he dismissed that line of speculation, it was pointless at the moment. He had to figure out how to get out of here first. There had been no sign of Saurial since the lights went out, not a sound in the dead silence, broken only by his breathing and heartbeat, to suggest that the scaly female was still present. That didn't reassure him all that much considering that there had been no sign beforehand either, and he had no idea how she'd gained access not only to the base but to his own quarters. However she'd managed it, though, she could well have utilized the same method to leave, possibly to go and deal with his men first.
Listening carefully yet again, in the end he cautiously stood up from the crouch he'd fallen into in the corner of the office, his eyes uselessly wide in the dark. It was as black as the bottom of a coal mine at night with the lights out, which wasn't all that surprising. No one who had never been underground really knew what dark was. He was upset that none of the battery powered emergency lighting had come on, even the little green tally lights on the three fittings in the ceiling were out. Apparently Saurial had disabled them to make life even more difficult.
His heart thudding in his ears and his weapon ready in his right hand, he reached out with the other one, trying to picture the layout of his office in his head. He'd become disorientated when he'd been spinning around trying to hit the skittering reptile, but thought that his desk was probably about six feet to the left in front of him. Slowly shuffling in that direction, he bit down on a vicious swear word as his knee found the corner of it, rather hard. Leaning on the desk he took pressure off that leg as it throbbed, gritting his teeth, until the pain diminished enough that he could walk.
Feeling around for his chair, he sat down, then put the gun in his lap to free up his other hand. Now that he knew where he was finding the drawers in the desk was much easier. He pulled out the top one as far as it would go, then reached under it to the back, peeling free the key that was stuck to an adhesive pad. Closing the drawer again he felt around for the lock on the lowest drawer, put the key in, and turned it. When the lock clicked he opened the double-height drawer and felt around in it for his emergency supplies kit, grabbing the tactical backpack and pulling it out.
Putting it on the desk he ran his hands over the cloth until he found the right pocket, unzipping it and removing a small but extremely bright flashlight, which he turned on.
The sudden brilliant white light made him close his eyes and swear again. It was overpowering after being in total darkness for a quarter of an hour. Blinking a few times, he squinted at the bag while his eyes adjusted, pulling out some more equipment. By the time he could see without tears in his eyes he'd half-emptied the bag, finding the head-mounted light which he put on then switched on.
The light from this one was much more wide-angle and less hard on the eyes so he turned the flashlight off to conserve the battery. Checking the equipment over, he went over various possible avenues of escape. Most of them failed immediately since without power he was definitely somewhat limited. On the other hand he was smart, experienced, and motivated.
Once he'd assured himself that all his gear was in working order, he moved around the office opening hidden cabinets and storage spaces, retrieving other weapons, ammunition, and various useful items. He went back into his bedroom and cleaned up a little, finding that the water still worked, although for how long he had no idea. The air circulation system had died with the power cut and he was uneasily trying to work out how long the air would remain breathable in these rooms without it. Long enough, hopefully.
Putting his costume on out of habit as much as any other reason, since it was obvious that Saurial knew exactly who he really was, Thomas rooted around in his closet to find his body armor, which went on over the top. He replaced his normal costume's shoes with military boots, put some fingerless tactical gloves on, then spend some time reloading the P-90 magazines. With the two spares he'd had under his bed, he now had five, giving him two hundred and fifty rounds. Four of those went into pockets in his equipment vest, as did three concussion grenades and two fragmentation ones, along with both the pistol from under his desk and the one from his bedside table. Each of those had two spare magazines as well, all using the same rounds the P-90 did.
The final weapon was the knife he kept under his pillow, which went into a sheath in one boot.
Going back to his desk he put the last box of spare ammo into the backpack along with the extra magazine, half a dozen demolition charges, the remote detonator, two claymore mines, a comprehensive first aid kit, emergency rations, several bottles of water, a dozen glowsticks, and a spare radio. The other one went on his belt. Turning this one on, he was somewhat disturbed not to hear any messages from his people. That implied… several not-good things.
Opening another drawer he removed a box which contained several PRT-issue earpieces with the current encryption codes programmed in. Putting one in he turned it on, just in case this was something to do with the PRT, so he could hear their comms. There was no chatter on them right now, which wasn't surprising so far underground, but if it was them and they came inside, he'd hear them. The last thing in the drawer was a monocular night vision headset, which combined an image intensifier with a thermal imager. He took his headlight off, put the night sight on and adjusted it so it came down over his left eye, then put the light back on. He left the monocular up for the moment.
Zipping up the now quite bulky backpack he put it on and adjusted it. Satisfied with the fit, he looked around, trying to work out if there was anything else he needed. While he had quite a few other weapons concealed in the suite, he couldn't easily carry and use anything more, so rather reluctantly he decided that he'd leave them. He did, however, open the safe under the desk and remove his master data backup drive, a small solid state one with several terabytes of critically important information on it. That went into one of the concealed pockets in his costume. With it, he could restart somewhere else, although it would take some years to acquire enough funding to do the job properly.
Thomas clipped the strap of the P-90 to his vest and was ready to go. He looked down at the submachine gun, wishing he'd picked one of the ones with the laser projector fitted to it, but he'd decided that he didn't entirely trust Tinker weapons in close proximity to him. Good old fashioned nitrocellulose had seemed more reliable. Now, though, he was wondering if a beam of coherent energy would be enough to deal with that fucking reptile… Shaking his head, he stopped wishing for things he didn't have and got back to working on his next move.
'Get out of here, try to find my men and find out what's going on, that's plan A,' he mused, staring at the very thick and heavy door leading into the corridor. His section of the base was isolated from the rest, another paranoid security measure he'd designed in. Once he was outside, it was a hundred yards through two more security doors and he'd be in the main part of the base.
'If I can't do that, everything has gone to hell, so plan B is to get to a console where I can set the self-destruct, wipe the computers, and then exit through the secret tunnel. Plan C is just head for the tunnel, but that leaves too much evidence behind, so that's a last resort. I wish I'd had the tunnel come out in my quarters, that would have been a better option.'
When he'd started the base, years ago, he'd considered having the final escape method right inside his suite, but not only was it awkward to arrange due to the construction of the place, he'd been worried about someone else using the tunnel to sneak up on him. As a result it had been put in a storage closet close enough to his office to easily get to, but far enough away that any intruder would be discovered before they got to him. Assuming they managed to get past the truly ridiculous amount of sensors and traps in the tunnel itself, of course.
Oh well. Even he couldn't anticipate every possible problem and solve it before it happened. Annoyingly.
Walking over to the door he tried the switch out of vague hopefulness, not surprised that nothing at all happened. With a sigh, he pulled his knife from his boot and pried the cover off the access panel for the controls, then reached inside and grabbed the handle for the backup hydraulic manual system. He'd had to think about it for some time before he remembered how it worked, never having had to use it before.
It took a hard pull then an even harder push to work the pump for the first stroke, but after that it was easier, the door starting to move after he'd pumped it half a dozen times. Each stroke moved the door only a fraction of an inch, so it took nearly ten minutes of continuous pumping to open it far enough that he could squeeze through. Unfortunately the thing was six inches of armor plate and so heavy that the hydraulics were the only thing that could move it, he had no way to just heave it open even after it unlocked.
Pushing his backpack through first, he went after it, putting it back on when he was in the corridor. Setting the night vision unit to thermal mode he dropped it over his eye, hoping it would give him advanced warning at further range than the headlight would supplied, took a deep breath, hefted his submachine gun, and set off towards where he hoped he still had backup.
At least out here a few of the widely-spaced backup lights were working, although in some ways that made it even creepier due to the shifting shadows. The thermal imager, which was sensitive enough to pick out footprints on the ground for minutes after they'd been made, showed nothing, which was a very small hopeful item. Perhaps Saurial really had gone? He hoped so, but didn't think he was that lucky.
Feeling that life had become very unfair suddenly, Thomas pressed on, pointing his weapon at every little sound or flicker of light and wondering why he'd ever thought an underground secret base was a good idea.
'Wow, that's a lot of equipment,' Taylor silently commented to the Varga, as they watched Calvert slowly and very cautiously proceed down the entirely black hallway from their position near the ceiling. 'This guy is seriously prepared for trouble.'
"In human terms, perhaps," the demon snickered. "I feel he may be somewhat deficient in anything that will actually help him at the moment."
She laughed, nodding. Dropping to the ground, she went over to the half-open door to Calvert's office and dug the claws of one hand into the surface, slowly pulling it shut again while bracing a foot against the frame to get the leverage. 'That should worry him if he ends up back here,' she grinned.
"Indeed. Shall we follow him and see what happens next? I'm curious to see what his reaction will be to our surprises."
Taylor laughed. 'Oh, yes, lets,' she replied, rubbing her hands together and smirking. 'I still have several other things I want to set up. We've got an hour or so to play, then I guess we need to let the PRT in to join in. They'll get bored hanging around outside.'
"It would be rude not to let them have fun as well considering the amount of effort they went to," he agreed mildly. "We should make sure to check in on the mercenaries soon too, they'll be feeling left out."
'Can't have that.' Generating her second aspect, now that they'd fully recovered from the earlier use of it, both clones of Saurial grinned at each other, then went after the nervous and heavily armed man slowly heading away from them, discussing the ways they could really screw with his head.
"Saurial reports that Calvert is on the move, looking extremely nervous and upset," Amy told the gathered people near her. "He apparently didn't appreciate some of her… little jokes."
Director Piggot seemed quite amused by this, she noticed with an internal smirk.
"Tell her she doesn't need to hold back as long as he's intact for questioning at the end of the operation," the blonde woman said with a certain amount of viciousness. "I'd prefer him undamaged physically. Mentally… She can use her own best judgment."
Miss Militia raised a finger, caught the woman's eye, and subsided, making both Amy and Lisa smile.
"We've discussed that, Director," Lisa calmly replied. "He'll be fit for questioning although he may need some time to get over it. But our cousins are less than pleased with his operation, and finding a torture chamber that's definitely been used in the recent past hasn't made them feel any happier about him. He won't forget this."
"Good. Make sure I get the video I have no doubt your family is recording," Piggot said. She smiled nastily. "I have a feeling I'll watch it several times, and probably laugh more than I really should."
"That's fairly likely," Lisa snickered. She listened to the status update that Taylor sent at that moment, then nodded to herself. "She's disconnected all the remaining camera feeds and external sensors as well, they're entirely isolated in there. We can move up to the bunker any time you want and prepare for entry."
Director Piggot looked at her watch. "No hurry," she commented idly. "We're on schedule right now, and I need to review the results of the external backup site operations. We may as well let Saurial and Raptaur enjoy themselves for a little longer."
Miss Militia and Armsmaster were both regarding the blonde woman with odd expressions, but Dragon, who had been silently listening while working on one of the computers nearby, produced a muffled chuckle. All of them watched as the director headed over to another console, adjusting her respirator as she walked. "Why do I get the feeling that she's enjoying this quite a lot?" Amy asked rhetorically.
Armsmaster looked like he was seriously considering answering, until Dragon poked him and shook her head. Grinning, Amy went back to monitoring the situation, wondering what their friend was doing now. It was undoubtedly something both funny and terrifying in equal quantity.
She almost felt sorry for Coil and his gang.
Almost.
Well… Not really.
Sergeant Owens looked around wildly, his weapon covering the entire room, which was now lit only by the residual glow from the monitors and various status lights on the equipment. Unlike in Coil's sector of the base, this latest power outage had clearly been surgically arranged to only take out the lights.
A couple of seconds later, the emergency battery-backed lights came on, one above the door illuminating the control room well enough that he could more or less see what he was doing. Sidling over to the console he flipped switches for a while, nervously glancing at the doorway every couple of seconds, in an attempt to find out what was happening. He discovered that all the camera feeds were now completely down including the external ones, all the external sensors surrounding the base and in key places in other buildings were also out, and that all of the internal systems that would allow him to track anyone had been disabled. It was definitely the work of someone accessing the main server farm, since it was so neatly targeted on leaving them blind but otherwise undamaged.
The environmental systems were still running perfectly, power was available to everything other than lights and that one sector, which he noted from the status of the internal security doors was even physically isolated from the rest of the base. He could access the public, low-security parts of the computer system as well, but an attempt to gain control over the infrastructure controls was met with total failure, none of the passwords or overrides doing anything other than eliciting a bland 'Access credential failure' on the terminal. Even their internal communications still worked judging by the very confused and in some cases panic-stricken calls that were coming over the radio
Eventually he gave up, since it was obvious he wasn't going to get anywhere with it. Possibly one of the others with more knowledge of the computers would have more luck, since he was by no means an expert, but somehow he doubted it. The hack was too clean, too quick, and far too targeted to be something that any of their people really had much chance of dealing with, at least quickly.
The big question was who was behind it? That voice in his ear… He shuddered. It had been completely inhuman, coming from something ghastly and hostile, he was sure. But at the same time it had sounded like it was having fun, like all this was only a game.
Looking at the 'score counter' on the single working monitor, he realized that was exactly what it was. A game. And whoever was behind it was basically hunting them.
Wondering for a moment if it was Über and Leet at work, he finally shook his head. This wasn't their style, going up against a large group of heavily armed and experienced soldiers. They were more into winding up the PRT and the Protectorate while putting on a show for the tourists, not wading into heavy combat, or even running some bizarre stealth infiltration exercise.
This, on the other hand… This was the work of a real professional. Some person or persons with experience, skills, equipment, and a lot more knowledge of how the base hardware and software worked than they should have had. There had been no indications at all that anyone had penetrated the place right up to the point they deliberately let everyone know that they were here. He thought that was likely a psychological technique to rattle and disorientate them, which had certainly worked better than it should have done. Possibly that was actually a good thing, it might suggest that the intruder or intruders didn't have the resources to take them on in a head-on assault. If that was the case, they might have a chance.
Although without access to the computers, the server room, power room, and armory, they were definitely going to have a hard time of it. While everyone was fairly well armed, they'd been equipped for heightened patrols, not active fighting, so ammunition was limited and a lot of the really good stuff was now in a room they couldn't even find.
How the hell that trick had been done mystified him. Presumably it was some Parahuman power, but that didn't narrow down exactly what the cause was or who was behind it. He could think of one or two purely technological methods to cause a similar result but all of them required a lot of setup time, which as far as he could see wasn't the case here.
Hearing a sound in the corridor outside the door, he spun and leveled his pistol at the opening, falling into a combat stance. It was pure rigid discipline that stopped him pulling the trigger when Captain Smith and Chen, the weapons specialist, appeared in the doorway, looking frazzled.
"Christ, I'm glad it's you guys," he sighed, lowering his weapon. The captain didn't respond for a moment, as he was staring at the monitor with the mocking little message on it. His eyes narrowed and his mouth went into a straight line, fury radiating from him.
"These fuckers are playing with us," he snarled, obviously on the edge. "Status," he snapped as he turned to Owens. "And where is Morales?"
"Gone, sir. No idea how or where. He was standing right next to me, then..." Owens shrugged. "Just gone without a trace in a brightly lit room. Not a whimper out of him."
"Fuck." Smith massaged the back of his neck with the hand not engaged in holding his own gun. "Fuck, fuck, fuck. Same as Hoskins."
"Presumably they're the two listed there," Owens noted with a nod at the screen. Smith simply glared at it. After a moment, the sergeant reported everything he'd determined from the security console.
"So," Smith summed up, gritting his teeth in anger, "we're cut off from our heavy weapons and most of our equipment, running blind both inside and outside, have no lights, and at any moment the rest of the power could go out, leaving us unable to even open most of the doors without a hell of a lot of effort and time."
"Basically, yes, captain," Owens replied, sighing. He shook his head. "It's very neatly done, not a shot fired but we're immediately at a massive disadvantage. And we have no idea who's even doing it."
"Got to be at least one cape," Chen put in, staring at the screen. "Hoskins just vanished. There wasn't any sound at all, he just disappeared when neither of us were looking. We couldn't find any sign of him anywhere."
"Stranger, or Tinker with some freaky tech, would be my guess," Smith stated. "Probably a team, four to five minimum. They'd need at least one in the power room, one in the server room since it's obvious that they were watching us and still might be, one or two near the armory, one here..."
"That many?"
"Everything happened at once, so I think it's obvious there are quite a few of them." Smith caressed the barrel of his submachine gun, looking like he wanted to shoot something very soon. "My guess is that they have a Tinker tech invisibility system, which is why we can't detect them. I've heard of shit like that, Toybox were selling something a while back for a crapload of cash. Coil tried to get some but they'd sold the lot. Maybe even to these fuckers."
"What are they after, though?" Owens asked. "This is a hell of a lot of effort to go to just to infiltrate one base. I didn't think we had anything here that was valuable enough for a mission this complicated. I mean, assuming they were the cause of that chemical incident, they've managed to evacuate most of the damn city aside from getting in here. Not to mention we have no idea how they got in here either."
"It's got to be information," Smith replied after a few seconds of thought. "Coil is into everything, his data is probably worth a fortune to the right people. I'll bet someone worked that out and set this whole thing up just to get at the servers. The rest of this is a diversion, like the chemical attack." He thought some more, then swore under his breath. "It might even be the fucking CIA. This is the sort of thing those bastards would do. Make it look like some weird cape game to throw off suspicion. Then when they're done, even odds they just evaporate, or manipulate the fucking PRT into coming in."
Owens looked at Chen, who shrugged. It was a pretty paranoid idea, but he couldn't say for sure it was impossible. He'd seen the spooks at work more than once himself in his military career and such black ops were certainly done now and then. He wondered what information Coil had come into possession of that was worth all this effort.
"So they're sucking data off the servers right now?" Chen asked.
"Probably. It'll take hours, there's dozens of terabytes of storage down there." Smith scowled. "If I was certain it was that, I'd just let the cunts get on with it, then deal with the fallout later. They might just fuck off and leave us alone. But..."
Chen made a small sound, causing both the others to look at him, then turn.
Level 1
Mercenaries 44 Me 3
"Shit!"
"I don't think they're going to leave us alone, sir," Owens said unevenly.
"No. Neither do I. Damn it." Smith looked extremely angry. He thought hard for a few seconds while Owens tried the computers again, with no more luck. Eventually, their leader nodded. "OK. If they want to play, we can do that." He plucked his radio from his vest and held the button down. "Everyone fall back to the cafeteria. Collect any weapons, ammunition, useful equipment, I don't care what it is, if you have it, bring it. No one goes anywhere in less than groups of three. Anything you see that's not us, kill it. Smith out."
Putting the radio back he turned to the other two men. "Grab a spare tablet, Owens. Can you route that screen to it?" He pointed at the monitor. Picking one of the tablets up, Owens began fiddling with it, then twitched when it helpfully displayed the same message before he'd done anything.
"Apparently, sir," he said in a worried tone, displaying it to the older man.
"Good work."
"I didn't do it." They shared a glance, Smith's face growing somewhat purple again.
"Oh, when I get my hands on this smart-ass, I'm going to make it last..." he muttered under his breath. "Right. Grab anything useful and come with me." Owens and Chen quickly went through the currently-useless room and packed half a dozen tablets, a couple of spare pistols, several boxes of ammunition, and the P-90 with underslung laser emitter that lived under the console into a box that they found in a cupboard. They even found a solitary smoke grenade that for no good reason was in a drawer.
"That'll do. Weapons hot, we're in a combat situation," Smith said impatiently, waiting at the door and covering the corridor. The three men, Owens carrying the box under his arm, cautiously headed towards the cafeteria while trying to look everywhere at once.
Putting her latest captive on a new pad, Taylor arranged him neatly, then stood up. The Varga was leaning against the wall wearing a duplicate Saurial form and watching her with a wide grin. "This is very enjoyable," he commented. "I haven't had so much fun for some time. We should do it more often."
Chuckling, she shrugged. "There are a limited number of people who I'm comfortable doing this to," she replied. "These guys, though… Even if they didn't help Coil torture whoever it was who went through that fucking room, they're complicit, so I don't have all that much sympathy for any mental trauma they might suffer, to a point. At least we're quick and neat about it. And I'm pretty sure that if we soften them up enough the PRT isn't going to have too much trouble."
"Just enough to warrant the use of the amount of force they have outside," he nodded. "Certainly, without us, I have no doubt that they'd have required those resources. This would be a difficult place to assault if the people here had enough warning to get ready for it and access to those weapons we've deprived them of. There were enough rocket launchers and grenades there to be a very serious hazard, not to mention the heavy machine guns and the like. Some of those tripod-mounted energy weapons looked rather imposing as well. I wonder where they got them?"
"No idea, but like you said, Calvert had enough money to afford the best stuff, and I bet he knew exactly where to buy it from as well," she noted. "But if we can confuse these guys enough, they're not going to be anything near the threat they'd have been otherwise, and hopefully Armsmaster and the others will take them by surprise." She grinned again. "It's probably a good training exercise if nothing else."
"Everything is a good training exercise if you regard it correctly," her demonic friend smiled. "As I have taught you."
"Hai, Sensei," she giggled, bowing to him formally. "Shall we go and see how else we can upset them?"
"That sounds like a sensible plan," the demon snickered. "We can leave Mr Calvert to enjoy the experience we set up for him for now. It should keep him occupied for a while."
"We should check on him every now and then, though, just to keep him honest," Taylor grinned.
With a mutual laugh they both disappeared again.
Sweeping the corridor, including the walls and the ceiling, with his thermal imager, Thomas very slowly moved towards the main part of the base. He had to go about eighty yards along this corridor, which went in a slight curve to the right, down a flight of stairs, another thirty yards along a lower corridor and around two corners, through the security door, and then he was into the more inhabited part. The closet that concealed his secret escape tunnel was half-way down the lower hall-way.
He decided that he'd check that the tunnel was accessible, which it should be due to having its own backup power source for the lights and various sensors, then try to get at his mercenaries. If he could contact them, he could arrange to have them sweep the base for Saurial, with any luck distract her, and have time to start the self-destruct and computer purge. That would give him twenty minutes before this entire place went up, probably ending up with the building above it collapsing into the hole. The PRT would take weeks to dig it out enough to recover the bodies of anyone who didn't make it out, and find any evidence he missed, which would give him ample time to escape.
He didn't intend to mention to Smith that he'd set the charges, although it was definitely possible the man would work it out when he disappeared. He wasn't an idiot, and was very paranoid too. Thomas didn't care one way or another, really, since the man didn't know enough about him to cause him any real harm and might well make a pretty impressive distraction, since he was unlikely to go down without a serious fight. With the amount of equipment and weapons in the armory, forty-seven mercs could hold off a small army for some time, even with Parahuman backup on the part of the PRT. The 'good guys,' a description that made Thomas smile ironically for a second, would try to take them alive for as long as possible. That was a weakness he was quite prepared to take advantage of.
Even if he couldn't set the self-destruct, his men would cause enough trouble that he could still make it out.
Although he was making plan after plan, he was still proceeding with great care, alert for traps or any sign of the lizard-girl. Even so, it took him nearly ten minutes to notice that something very odd was wrong.
'What the...' He stopped, then looked around, checking where he was. Turning and looking back, he stared at the small LED emergency light on the ceiling some fifteen yards behind him. Surely he'd passed that nearly five minutes ago?
Shaking his head, he put it down to nerves causing him to mis-estimate the passage of time, something that he was aware was something that happened in times of severe stress. Turning back to the task in hand, he very slowly kept going, panning his weapon from side to side. Another few minutes passed, the corridor becoming very dark as he went out of range of the light behind him. Shortly he was approaching the next one, wishing it cast a brighter illumination. Combined with the light on his head, there were a lot of shadows around to confuse the issue and he kept having to suppress a twitch every time he thought he saw something out of the corner of his eye.
Passing under the light, he glanced up at it as part of his scanning of the corridor. No thermal sources other than the lights themselves showed, the concrete otherwise all at the same even temperature, which was to be expected this far underground. A few feet further on he stopped dead, staring at the ground through the thermal sight. Something was showing up against the monochrome background.
Kneeling, he stared at the footprint that was faintly glowing, indicating a temperature a fraction of a degree above ambient. It was very dim, showing it was several minutes old, but it was definitely there. The pattern was of a military issue boot much like his own. Looking further ahead he could see a line of them disappearing into the distance, each one very slightly brighter than the previous one.
Someone else was here. Someone not a fucking lizard. Was that good, or not?
He opened his mouth to call out, then instantly thought better of it, snapping it shut. No, he wasn't about to make any noise and let that damn reptile know where he was. Standing up, he followed the footprints intently, although not to the exclusion of keeping watch for anything scaly.
Several minutes passed, the line of spectral footprints wandering around the floor but still heading steadily away from him. His quarry was just up ahead, somewhere, although they seemed to be moving in the dark as he could see no light. Switching his monocular to image intensification mode for a moment, he peered ahead, but could see nothing moving in the now green-lit shadows. After a moment he switched it back to thermal mode and kept going.
It was just dawning on him that he should have reached the stairs by now when he spotted something ahead of him. Speeding up a little, he reached the point in question and stopped, looking at the floor in puzzlement.
The footprints went a little odd here, several of them overlapping as if the person he was following had turned around on the spot, and there was a larger diffuse heat shadow that had him confused for a second until he realized it was where his target had knelt down on one knee, just like he…
Thomas's mind suddenly went blank for several seconds. He peered at the immaterial image on the floor, visible only with his high tech device, then looked up at the ceiling. There was an emergency light a few feet away, just behind him.
His mind suddenly raced. What he was thinking was impossible, wasn't it?
After a considerable amount of thought, he swung his pack off his shoulders and reached into a side pocket, pulling out a sealed foil package. Putting it between his teeth for the moment he put the pack back on, then tore the foil and pulled out a glow stick. Snapping it between his fingers, he shook it, the plastic tube lighting up bright green, then dropped it on the floor.
Taking a deep breath, he tentatively tried splitting off a new timeline. It immediately went to the by-now horribly familiar void, which didn't actually surprise him. Sighing heavily, he held his gun ready and set off again.
A few minutes later he found himself staring down at a brightly glowing plastic tube lying on the floor.
"Oh, fuck," he breathed, shivering.
This was really bad.
"Shut up, all of you!" Captain Smith roared. The assembled mercenaries snapped to attention and stopped talking, all of them looking worried but resolute. "Good. OK, we're in a situation here. There are an unknown number of infiltrators in the base, we're running blind with no camera support or sensors, and somehow we're cut off from most of our resources. The medbay, armory, power room and server room seem to have vanished. All we have to work with is what's on those three tables. You, you, and you, inventory it and we'll see what we've got. Everyone else, keep your eyes peeled, these fuckers are playing mind games with us. And..." He pulled out his pistol and turned slightly, aiming and firing four shots, each of which took out one of the cameras that covered the galley. "If they're watching us through the camera network, that should slow them down. Take out any camera you see."
"What about Coil, sir?" one of the mercenaries asked, looking around suspiciously. "Have you talked to him?"
"We've lost contact with Coil as well," Smith replied, frowning. "Nothing since the camera system got compromised."
"The radios still work, though," the man pointed out. "So why hasn't he called us?"
"He's dead, or out of action, or his radio failed, or comms in that area of the base are down… Who the fuck knows, Kowalski? I don't really care right now, we have more important things to think about. If he's still alive I'm sure he'll turn up sooner or later, probably after we've done all the work."
The man, who was one of the ones going over the piles of equipment, nodded, not looking entirely happy. He got back to work while everyone else kept their eyes on all the entrances to the room.
Eventually the three-man team finished. "Sir?" Smith turned to look at Kowalski. "We've got standard issue handguns for each man, with enough loaded magazines for three each, with four left over. Thirteen boxes of fifty rounds of 5.7mm ammunition for a total of six hundred and fifty. Twenty-nine P-90s with laser emitters, each with three magazines, plus one spare. Fifteen frag, twenty-two concussion, and six smoke grenades. Five M18A1 claymore mines. An even dozen demolition charges with two remote detonators. One M2E2 fifty cal machine gun without the tripod, but with a box of ammunition."
"I was servicing it," Chen put in, "which is why it's here and not in the armory. It's functional, I finished putting it back together."
"We also have two MGL 40mm grenade launchers and fourteen rounds for them, plus nine combined night/thermal sights. And a shitload of knives," Kowalski finished. "Radios for everyone, of course, a couple of dozen glowsticks, some flashlights, and a few odds and ends, like some medical kits, but nothing else useful."
"All right." Smith thought for a while. "Put the grenade launchers to one side for now, down here they're as dangerous to us as they are to anyone else. We'll keep them for a real emergency. You two, set up the M2 on that table covering the main door. You and you, barricade the other two doors, I want them completely sealed. This is our fallback point."
The indicated mercenaries moved to follow the orders he issued. "What's the plan, sir?" Owens asked when his superior officer stopped talking.
"We make sure we can hold out here if it goes to shit. When I'm happy that's done, we're going to take two teams of ten men each and sweep the entire base, one from each end, heading back this way." Smith looked thoughtful as he spoke, clearly working out the plan on the fly. "With any luck we can flush them out and catch them in a crossfire. If they try to get in here, we open up on them with the heavy gun."
"And if that doesn't work? Do we abandon the base and take the emergency exit?"
"We have no idea who's out there," Kowalski pointed out. "Without the cameras, we might be running into a trap."
"True. I'd prefer to catch whoever's behind this and get control back." Smith seemed quietly angry now as he made his plans. "Abandoning the base is the last resort. Once we're outside we have too many uncontrolled factors, like the PRT, the cops, and whatever backup these bastards have. In here, with some hard work, we should be able to take the initiative. I doubt there's more than half a dozen of them, and clearly they're not able to fight us on an even basis, or they'd have done it and not started playing games. Once we catch one of the fuckers we can find out who they are and what resources they have. And if Coil ever deigns to join us, he can help."
The two men tasked with setting up the heavy machine gun had improvised a mount with half a dozen fifty-pound bags of rice from the galley, which the weapon was sitting on, aimed squarely at the double doors that led into the corridor outside the room. The other two doors now had a number of heavy items blocking them, which secured them fairly well as the doors opened inwards. Smith looked around and nodded.
"OK. Owens, you're squad leader for one team. I'll take the other. Corporal Foltz, you're in charge here until I get back. Do not shoot any of us when we come in that door, got me?"
The mercenary addressed nodded.
"We'll stay in contact with the radios. Assume that the enemy can monitor us, so don't say anything that will help them unless you have no choice." He looked around, then indicated nine men. "You're with Owens. You lot, you come with me. Gear up, three night vision sets per team. Take four demo charges and some concussion grenades as well, but for fuck's sake be careful with them or you'll bring the roof down on us. Kowalski, monitor that fucking tablet and let us know what those bastards tell us about their little game."
"Sir!" Everyone saluted him.
"Let's get to work. I want to see some bodies as soon as possible."
Forming up into pairs, the two sets of ten mercenaries left the cafeteria, splitting up outside and heading in opposite directions. Behind them, the ones left behind manned the machine gun nest and distributed the remaining weapons among themselves, while discussing how and where to set up some booby-traps for the intruders.
"Interesting," the Varga mused as he followed one of the teams, scuttling along the ceiling above them. "They have very limited amounts of ammunition for their weapons, so if we can get them to waste it, that will make the entire thing simpler for the PRT."
'I doubt we can get them to fire it all off, they'll work it out sooner or later,' Taylor replied silently as she followed the other team in the same way. 'But I bet we can get them to use a lot of it. We'll just have to be careful not to do it anywhere the ricochets could be too dangerous. And we should watch out that we don't get them so freaked out they start tossing those grenades around, in here they could kill themselves with them if they make a mistake.'
"Indeed. So we go slowly and carefully and pick our moment..." He snickered to himself, making her grin. "I have some ideas."
'Me too,' she chuckled. 'These guys are going to take a while to get to the other end of the base, they've got about six doors to get through and that takes them some time. I'll go and see what our friend Thomas is up to, I'm curious to see if he worked it out yet.'
"All right. I'll monitor these people then."
She teleported into the corridor where Calvert had been left, which they'd spent a little time setting up a spacial loop in, based on the sort of thing Vista did as Cloak. It took more work than the girl needed since the Varga magic worked on somewhat different principles, but the effect was much the same. The corridor was now considerably longer than it should be, and also basically endless, something it looked like Calvert had just noticed.
She watched him stare at the glow stick he'd left on the floor, impressed at how quickly he'd figured out what might be going on. Clearly he'd dropped it to mark a specific point. Now he looked horrified that he'd walked away from it and come right back to the thing from the other side.
Grinning a little, she made sure to get a good shot of his expression. After a few seconds, he bent down and picked the stick up, inspecting it carefully, then dropped it again and looked around. Sighing, he turned and headed in the other direction obviously wanting to see what happened. Feeling mischievous, she held off until he was out of sight around the corner, then produced another glow stick which was emitting blue light instead of green and replaced the first one with it, eating the redundant one.
Then she waited.
Thomas walked away from the green chemical light on the floor, his head spinning. How was this happening? It was the sort of thing Vista was able to do, but he couldn't see a trace of any of the usual visual distortions that marked her spacial warping abilities. The corridor looked entirely normal, but now that he thought back, he'd definitely walked considerably more than eighty yards along it before he'd come across his own footprints laid down in minute temperature differences on the floor. Somehow he was looping past the same point even though it looked like the hallway was its standard self.
The regularly spaced lights and the lack of any real points of interest in the bland concrete tunnel meant that one part of it looked much like another part. He had been concentrating on looking out for Saurial and had missed going past the door to his office, which he must have done at least once. Now that he was looking for it, though, he spotted it coming up on the right. Stopping outside it he stared. The door was shut again, and there were five holes punched into the solid steel surface, each of them apparently made by something very sharp, and spaced perfectly to match a more or less human hand…
Feeling one hole, he shivered again, then quickly walked off. Obviously anything left in his office was now out of reach since he had no way to open the door.
After a little longer, he saw a glow up ahead at floor level. He'd been counting his paces this time and had covered nearly two hundred and fifty yards. Which was definitely not possible unless there were some very odd things happening to space in the vicinity of the hallway.
Reaching the glow stick, he gaped at it in horrified shock. Picking it up he inspected it carefully. To all appearances it was the same one he'd dropped, except that it was the wrong color.
"For fuck's sake," he gritted, now at least as pissed off as worried. Tossing it to the side, he turned around on the spot, pointing his weapon everywhere and ready to fire. When he rotated all the way back to where he'd started he noticed that the glow stick was now orange.
"Bastard!" he shrieked, firing the weapon at it. Glowing fluid splashed across the wall, slowly dimming as it met the oxygen in the air. Fuming, he looked both ways. After a few seconds, he stared into the distance, squinting.
"What the hell?" he muttered. He could see more of the ceiling mounted emergency lights than he should have been able to due to the curve of the corridor, which followed the shape of the underground base. Blinking, he rubbed his eyes. When he looked again, there was yet another one visible. Then another. Looking the other way he saw the same thing happening.
Shortly he was gaping at a string of lights that led off to the vanishing point in both directions, thirty feet or so apart. The effect was very disorientating.
When one in the far, far distance, much too far away to have fitted into the base in any way at all, faded out and disappeared, he felt a slight shock go through him. The way it had vanished wasn't like it had turned off, more like something had moved in front of it. Something big…
The next one did the same thing.
Thomas peered at the distant lights. There was something very wrong about this, other than the sheer impossibility of what he was looking at in the first place.
Another light was occluded.
The time between them disappearing was getting shorter.
Yet another one went out.
Feeling cold, he turned and began walking in the other direction, looking back over his shoulder.
The next light vanished.
He could hear something right on the edge of audibility, something very, very disturbing.
Again, one went out. Again, it was slightly quicker to vanish than the previous one.
Thomas sped up.
So did the rate of the lights going out.
He began to jog.
The lights disappeared one after another, faster and faster. The sound, still impossible to pinpoint, yet something he was certain he didn't want to hear any better, got a little louder.
With one last look over his shoulder, Thomas Calvert started running for his life, while something followed remorselessly.
'Can you check on my guys? I'm a little busy right now,' Taylor said, rather amused at the effect her ad-hoc modification to the endless corridor trick had produced.
"Of course," the Varga laughed, teleporting to the other end of the base, where the second team of mercenaries was engaged in going through another security door, which was a fairly tedious process even with the access cards they had. The doors closed quickly but opened quite slowly, the hydraulic systems moving a very large amount of mass to lift them. "They seem quite busy for now, I think they'll keep for a while."
'Great. I want to move this on to the next part with Coil before we get back to the mercs. You can have the honors of the first contact scenario if you want.'
"Thank you, Brain, that's very generous of you. I'll wait until both teams are in position, though. That looks like it will be about five minutes."
'OK.' Taylor watched through the aspect he was using as the ten-man team closed the door and moved on, then went back to her Calvert manipulations. Finally, she was going to have a chance to try something she'd wanted to for a while.
Thomas, panting for breath and desperately, exhaustedly, wishing he'd never even fucking heard of Brockton Bay, screamed in terror as he ran as fast as he could. Pulling a grenade from his vest he tossed it over his shoulder and kept going, the bass thump of the blast a few seconds later nearly deafening him.
Even through ringing ears he could hear the gurgling call, emitted from something that should not exist, that should never have existed, come from somewhere back in the dark.
"Tekeli-li," it whispered, as it got closer.
"Tekeli-li"
"Tekeli-li"
"Tekeli-li"
Thomas Calvert howled and ran as if the devil himself was on his tail, which he was fairly certain was in fact the case.