C'est La Vie (Worm/MtG) #05.4
A/N: BANZAI! Well, this one certainly changed as well and took a bit longer than when I last posted.
—
I opened my eyes only moments after laying down. It felt that way at least.
"Bee, Beep."
It was dark though, the sun had gone down. Had been down for a while, from the looks of things outside.
"Bee, Beep."
Blinking against dry, gummed up eyes I squinted up at the blurry ceiling; idly, I followed the lines I knew were the metal ceiling joists.
"Bee, Beep."
And my watch was beeping, which… which meant it was time for my shift.
Six hours, gone, like it was nothing.
"Bee, Beep."
In the hall outside something shifted, brushing away a mosquito. I flinched away as a bright light suddenly flashed over my face.
A sharp rapping drew me back though, and squinting toward the door I saw the half lit blurry figure through the windows running the length of the short hall outside. Artur.
Seeing him made his question from the night before come back to me: "Why are you here?"
"Bee, Beep."
Raising my hand to acknowledge him, I fell back against the floor as he turned back to the balcony he'd been keeping watch from while I'd slept.
I slowly pulled myself together as he gathered his things.
"Bee, Beep."
It would be easier to just tell him my bugs would maintain the perimeter while I slept, but…
"Bee, Beep."
It was better to keep things like that in my sleeve.
Turning off the alarm I threw off the bedroll, sat up, and ground the crusty rheum out of my eyes with a few swipes of my thumb and forefinger.
Artur returned as I was packing up my bedroll and knocked on the window beside the door. Buckling my bedroll I shuffled over to let him in.
"Sleep vel?"
I grunted and shuffling back to my pack I grabbed my utility belt and thigh holster.
Sitting against a desk I fumbled the buckles with clumsy fingers as Artur dropped his rucksack then sank into one of the many office-turned-storage room's swivel chairs. It creaked, loudly, like someone was stepping on a toad.
"So. You spot anything skulking about out there," I asked blearily, tiredly glancing up from tightening the holster's straps.
Artur just twitched his shoulders in a shrug, a small smile pulling at his lips as he leaned back in the chair. "Some sort of creetter is in yard, boot nozing to report." The smile turned into something almost wistful, "Vas good vatch," he mused. "No commander to shout, no artillory, animal no shoot eef see first. Veery relaxing."
I hummed and nodded, not sure what else to say about his sobering comment. It was telling though, that despite how things had gone he considered this place to be relaxing compared to a warzone.
"I—" I covered my mouth to stifle a yawn and stood, hefting my pack by its carry handle. "I see. I'll see you in six hours then."
Giving me a lazy, two-fingered salute he slouched back in the chair and muttered something about snow. I turned to the door and he was there, standing in it as he had the night before; half turned and half out the door, he was staring at me with a quizzical look.
"Why are you here?"
I stepped through the memory and shut the door behind me. Artur's question still echoed in my ears though, just as it had since he'd asked it.
For a moment I caught my disheveled reflection in the windows opposite me and I turned away, heading for the small balcony at the end of the short hall that Artur had been keeping watch on.
I didn't need a mirror to know I looked like crap.
Absently, stepping out onto the balcony, I ran a hand back through the hair that had come free of the loose braid I'd made before bed.
I dropped my pack beside the chair Artur and leaned against the railing to look down on a hundred-foot square patch of jungle. An island of near solid green in the middle of the gravel that surrounded the veterinary complex and kept it separated from the surrounding jungle.
A fourteen-foot wall topped with once electrified wires surrounded the patch, keeping it from spreading and from being disturbed. No doubt it had once been a yard space or temporary enclose for whatever animals were being kept and cared for here, going by the multiple sliding gates that let in and out of the buildings where animal pens were.
Though, I imagined it had been a bit less dense then. Whatever it had looked like years ago, it had since become a flourishing microcosm of the jungle, complete with pond and overflow stream that ran out a drainage grate set into the wall.
It would probably be a good place to leave my orb weavers whenever I went out, they'd stay localized with all the food in there.
But… Looking down on the growth resurrected a memory of a city struggling to get back on its feet, and that led into a memory of a shattered battlefield. Only tangentially connected, but connected by the same thread: The Apocalypse. So many threads ultimately led to it.
Plans could be made later. Recalling the orb weavers I'd sent down before going to bed I sat down, got comfortable, and reached into my pack to dig out my small journal and a battery powered lantern.
Pushing aside some vines to clear a space on the railing, I set down the lantern, put it to dim, and began flipping through pages covered in chicken scratch until I found the blank pages near the end— the increasingly few blank pages that remained, actually.
I slowly spun my pencil between my prosthetic's gauze wrapped digits. It was a surprisingly complex motion that let me practice my dexterity as it had with my offhand. Fortunately, letters wouldn't be quite as difficult.
But actually writing though...
I glanced back through the windows looking into the converted office space to see Artur propping up his spear against a desk and rolling out his bedroll.
"Why are you here?"
The pen faltered, began to fall, but catching it with a small tendril and returned it to the wrapped digits.
My being unable to sleep hadn't been his fault, I should have expected him to ask it after the Birdcage had arisen in conversation. The issue was how to answer it. Not that I wanted to, or was going to, but putting it into words…
I knew why I'd been exiled here, or at least I thought I did. I'd been a monster at the end, far too dangerous to be allowed to go free. And, even if I'd somehow recovered, if I'd managed to reclaim my mind, I would never be safe in reach of anyone who'd survived the conflict.
Whether being exiled was a mercy or a punishment, I didn't know. But the fact that I'd been sent here, rather than Aleph, Bet, Gimel, or any of the other worlds that Bet had been evacuated to during Scion's rampage hadn't escaped Artur and he had broached the question.
It had made me question how to even describe what had happened, to describe the scale of the conflict in a way someone could understand. There were the how's, the why's, the who's and the when's...
I put the pen to the first line and wrote.
So many details to parse... But I could try, that was all I could do.
Each letter of each word was written mechanically, the pen as held in the prosthetic moving in precise lines, arcs, and circles as if tracing over an elementary schooler's homework.
Slowly but surely the page began to fill.
Page after page I wrote, the speed of my writing growing with each line. I only stopped when I reached the end of the notebook and set the pen down in the seam.
What had been written could be put into two categories: Factual and personal. The bulk of what had been written was the former, a timeline of event, details, turning points and so on. Towards the latter pages, it had become increasingly focused on the personal though. My mistakes, faults, and those important people who had kept me anchored but were gone to me now.
It was a start. There was more to say, I needed more paper. Making a new journal would probably be best if only to keep things organized.
I thought back to everything I'd found during my survey of the building and drew on my swarm to search through the facility. This time I kept my focus limited to intact writing materials, selecting for supplies that hadn't been damaged by pests or time eventually narrowed it to two locations. From there, only one was favorable for lack of distractions.
Stowing my journal I started to stand to head back inside, though, a sigh from Artur back in the makeshift bunkroom reminded me that I wasn't alone here.
My lips quirked and I sat down again. After everything that had happened today, the office could wait a few more minutes.
Once I was sure Artur had fallen asleep, I stood and slipped inside; my darkened lantern in hand and my pack slung over one shoulder.
Walking alongside the windows opposite the converted office space, my eyes were drawn past the balcony encircling the large room beyond and down to the large holding pen it overlooked.
Big enough to have fit a half a dozen elephants comfortably, the space was big; it took up a full half of the central building that made up the center line of the T & E shaped structure.
However, a holding pen was what it had been when this place had been operational. Sometime since then, metal barriers set into the concrete floor had been cut away and it had been turned into a sort of makeshift command center.
Artur had speculated this may have been the basecamp for the people who came in after whatever had happened here to shut down the park.
Judging by the presence of the big server tower and the terminals surrounding it, a complex radio setup on an out of the way table, the bulletin boards covered with notes, pictures, and pin-covered maps not dissimilar to Artur's, he was probably right. That meant this place had the most up to date information on the island outside of whatever intel he'd had access to.
And the files were intact—for the most part. Damage done by pests excluded, just about everything in the building was in fairly good shape. No doubt consequence of the jungle still being at a distance, but also something to attribute to the building itself. It was built like a hospital, with all the sanitation measures associated with such: Thickly painted walls and sealed surfaces, epoxy coated floors, good and mostly intact seals against weather ingress and more.
Barring some superficial fading caused by the windows that ran most of the second floor of the building's warehouse-like central structure, everything looked to be just as it had been when the people left. Eerie though.
Later though, once I was done.
A small smile pulled at my lips at the thought of learning more about this place; the history of it. The little tidbits I'd found in the utility bunker on my first day, at the radio bunker, and at the visitors center— thus far I only had pieces of the story, I might be able to get the full picture down there. It might even be a nice reprieve, one I was done.
Continuing to the end of the short hall, I slowly pulled open the door to the stairwell leading downstairs so as to not wake Artur and eased it shut behind me.
Reaching the main floor, I took a moment to disarm the tripwire trap Artur and I had set and stepped out into the dark hall.
Crossing the hall, I pushed through a pair of creaky double doors and into what I figured to have been the main office and worked my way through the space. Passing by desks with work left unfinished, monitors with dusty CRT monitors, shelves full of binders, and filing cabinets that stood empty, I stopped at an island in the center of the room.
Standing in front of an old, yellowed laser jet printer set atop a side table, I knelt and after a bit of finagling was rewarded with an almost full ream of blank paper.
There were plenty of desks in the room and picking the cleanest— a 'Doctor Harding's' —I brushed away the dust and sat down. Pen held with my prosthetic, I opened my journal and began where I left off.
Cont.
—You were right of course. I never did learn to ask for help, not really. I suppose it would have meant admitting to needing help, a weakness, or allowing the possibility that they would refuse, and everything would fall apart...
-I-
I'd just set down a box of files when I felt the increasingly familiar sinus tickling and pushed away my half-assed dust mask. I just managed to keep down the sneeze.
Rubbing my nose I looked up to the hanger-like doors that let out into the yard and grimaced. Even if I could manage to force open the doors with my water manipulation to let some air in, it just wouldn't be worth it. For now, I just settled for opening up some normal doors to the outside to get some air circulating.
Removing the box's lid I raised the lantern and began flicking through files, pulling out groups according to their reference codes and titles. The stack I ended up with was larger than was precisely necessary, but I had time, and the utility of the information was only half of the point. Sleuthing through everything left behind after getting through with salvaging what I could, it was a nice bit of mundanity, learning more about the islands history and its wildlife; native and introduced.
It was a different kind of relaxation beyond what I had experienced on the island so far.
There were ups and downs to what I had found though.
The herbivores didn't seem like they would be much of an issue, it was just a matter of keeping your distance and 'gauging the herd's mood' as one of the veterinarians had put it, whatever that meant. The short of it seemed to be that it was best to keep your distance if they were agitated.
But then there were the carnivores.
It was… illuminating, reading. The information in the files not only gave me insights into how the animals behaved but also made me wonder how the people building this place had thought it would be a good idea to stock it as they had. Had they been insane, or maybe just stupid?
Artur had said this place was meant to be like a safari park, which meant people driving around in cars to see the animals. The problem was, besides the herbivores averaging out at several tons on the low end, a full third of the animals on the island were predators.
Ironically enough though, as much as I'd been interested in information on the animals, I'd gotten too much. I was forced to sift through the files to find the useful tidbits and decipher scientific jargon.
Fortunately, some of the notes pinned to the bulletin boards had contained reference numbers to certain files. It only helped so much though. Some files, or entire boxes, were missing, but there were enough to start building profiles on the wildlife quickly enough.
Also, to get an idea of what had been going on here after the park had been shut down.
From what I had been able to surmise, a rather sizable team of scientists, engineers, and security personnel had come in and settled here to take an accounting of the island. An extensive accounting. They had also ventured out and shut down the island's facilities, demolishing them in some cases, cut down sections of fencing to let the animals move freely, opened gates, locked doors, and so on.
In total there had been at least thirty six people here going by the number of bunks that had been setup in the medium sized holding pens. Whatever the number was though, it had been a sizable contingent and the supplies they had brought with them— and left behind —reflected that.
Chief among what had been left behind was a pallet of foodstuffs. Most hadn't lasted in the intervening years, but there were a few cases of canned foods, some other sealed containers, and a pair of five-gallon buckets full of white rice that had survived just fine. Among other things though, I had also uncovered a few ounces of demolitions explosive was buried under a pile of knocked over schematics and several handguns stuffed into duffel bags of clothes and personal effects. As I'd expected, whatever had happened they had left in a hurry.
Why though wasn't clear and nothing I'd seen indicated a reason when by all accounts they had been safe and secure behind the electrified fencing that they'd been running on a local backup generator set up in an outbuilding.
Regardless, while they had pulled the drives from the server rack and taken a number of filing boxes regarding the dinosaurs' anatomy, what they had left behind was more than enough for me to work with.
Observed behaviors between different species interacting, territory range projections, surviving species, and expected die-offs, and more. It seemed they had never really let the animals intermingle or cohabitate to any extent for fear of them fighting.
Making a few more notations on some paper, I set aside a file on the Dilophosaurus and reached for the next in the stack. An interesting dinosaur, that one. Apparently, it could spit venom upwards of twenty feet which was… nice. The animals described and photographed in the folder were also the same as those I'd driven off before finding the radio bunker. Something else I'd have to keep an eye out for.
Again I had to wonder what the people running this place had been thinking.
Flipping open the next folder I found myself looking down at a picture of a familiar yellow eye peeking out through palm fronds. Velociraptor. Obligate carnivore, pack hunter, sequential hermaphrodites (meaning they could breed if there was no male), and the ultimate death knell for the liability nightmare that was "Jurassic Park".
How the people running this place had thought it a good idea to create these things was beyond me.
Able to run at sixty mph in an open field? Sure, might be entertaining to watch them hunt from afar. Able to communicate and coordinate movements to distract their prey? That's a bit more suspect but ok. But then Artur had revealed the tidbit about them being able to open doors which had led to letting him set the tripwire to settle his nerves.
But doors were only a fraction of the complaints about them it seemed. Increasingly concerned memos described everything from the animals systematically attacking the electrified fences of their enclosures, or attempting to escape them by digging or trying to trick their handlers into opening the gates in escape attempts. I hadn't been surprised to find an official proposal from the park game warden to terminate the species.
Altogether, it didn't paint a pretty picture.
Smart and deadly were not the type of traits that made for a zoo animal. And 'smart' was probably understating things considering that the pack I'd initially encountered had figured out my range. Admittedly, I hadn't exactly been subtle with my attempts to keep them at arm's length, but that kind of contextual pattern recognition wasn't anything to scoff at.
And then there were the replacements they'd had planned, the Herrerasaurus. Those things were no better. Pack hunters as well, and while not as intelligent they were tenacious to the point of tracking something for miles. They just wore their prey down until it was too tired to escape.
Shaking my head I opened the file and began reading, taking down the occasional note and referencing the other files concerning them.
A comment on the board had said both species had been dealt with but, well, I'd seen how accurate that information was.
Sometime later, when I was halfway through my third sheet, a silk line that stretched out beyond my current range was pulled, then broke. Having been positioned four feet above the ground it couldn't have been anything 'small' that had tripped it. And it hadn't been sudden enough to be a bat.
I kept an eye on the area, and a few minutes later a lumpy, misshapen form waddled through some ground level foliage. Some of my swarm converged to get a look at it and as some crawlers got close a hot, tiny, hand grabbed a small beetle and there was a momentary sensation of wetness, then it vanished.
I looked up from the file and frowned.
Artur had said there were 'critters' out and about, and the files had referenced projected population depletion rates concerning the native wildlife, but nothing I had found mentioned any kind of primate on the island.
More of the swarm gathered on and near it. Some were lost in the process as it gobbled them up, but enough landed on it to give me a familiar visual. Its temperature, the thumbed feet, the long bald tail; an opossum, and, judging by the shifting lumps on its back, its many babies.
Funny how something like that could survive here, or get here— though, that may have come about due to this place being built.
The mama waddled along, sniffling at plants and sticking its head into the leaves; foraging in search of food.
It probably wouldn't have been what tripped the high tripwire though, especially with the babies on its back. Keeping watch on things in the direction, I fed it a few disposable beetles and grubs then left it be until something in the air drew me back a few minutes later.
The decomposers, those more sensitive to such smells picked it up first: the smell of something beginning to rot. It was faint, but growing stronger. Then a line of silk snapped, and then another. More of my swarm caught the scent as the wind shifted.
The source of the scent slowly entered my range, roughly following the same path the opossum had taken. Shuffling, feet dragging, it moved oddly and there was a faint rasping.
My swarm converged to give me an idea of what I was dealing with, but before I had half of it I recognized the shape.
Grimacing, I flipped back through the Velociraptors file and underscored the notation about their durability.
Damn, but these things were tenacious.
Though… My pen paused as the details grew. The bugs were being ignored entirely, as if it wasn't even aware of them or simply didn't register where the others had fled their massed presence. My swarm landed on damp hide and smelling the rot, feeling the swollen, oozing flesh… hardy or no, I had no idea how it was even moving.
—
A/N: To those that wanted more mana interaction in the story, well here you go.
Edit: Oh, and because someone on asked about it, I set up a . I mean, not much I can say about it, its there if you want to support my caffeine addiction, don't have many plans for it at the moment tho.
pat reon #18283954