Chapter 1
As X surveyed the room one last time, he felt the urge to look away in disgust, but years of war and death had ingrained a level of tolerance for seeing sights like this one. However, learning to tolerate something didn't always mean a person got used to it – there are just some things that a person never gets used to.
The small, barracks-like building he stood in had once served as one of the living quarters for the inhabitants of refugee camp 5 in Reconstruction Zone 7 of Sector 345690. The place was littered with smashed furniture and the bodies of dead refugees. Some of them had been cut into pieces while others just had deep slash marks all over their body, but all of them had stab wounds. The contents of several boxes had been scattered on the floor, probably from either the struggle put up by the humans and reploids who had sought safety from their attackers here or from a frantic, last minute search for anything that could be used as a weapon. There was no sign of forced entry into the building, other than the door X had to break down to get inside. This struck X as odd since the windows and remaining door were all barricaded. For someone to get in, they would have had to take out at least one of the hastily erected barriers. X wondered what could possibly have gotten in and out of the building without having to destroy any of the barricades.
It was possible that it had been reploid with a short-range teleporter but the signs of the struggle looked wrong for that. Almost all teleporters had some characteristic that gave away their use, usually a sound or flash of light, but there was no indication that the refugees had reacted to any such warning sign before they were attacked. From what X could tell, something had happened inside the building to cause the refugees to burst into a sudden panic.
A chill ran down X's spine as his he made eye contact with one of the corpses, briefly flushing away the anger he was feeling. There was something eerily familiar about the lifeless, blank stare of the body's eyes that gave him a strange sense of déjà vu. X dismissed the sensation as a voice spoke through his communicator.
"X, did you find something?"
The blue Hunter looked away from the carnage as he spoke into his helmet's communicator. "Yeah Zero, more bodies. All of them appear to have been hacked to death with a beam saber and they all have a distinctive stab wound in their chests, like someone ran them through. It's just like the camp the 23rd found last week. What about you? Did you find any signs of survivors?"
"No. The only thing I found here is some wrecked equipment and more bodies. These people weren't even armed . . . who could do something like this?" Zero replied the anger over what happened and his inability to find anything that could help discover who was responsible was evident in his voice.
X thought that Mavericks were the obvious culprits, but this attack didn't match their method of operation. Normally when Mavericks hit a camp they left a few survivors, trashed the shelters, and looted the place of anything useful. But nothing appeared to have been stolen and the camp itself was largely intact. It was as though the attacker specifically targeted the refugees themselves. The incident a week earlier had occurred near an abandoned Reploid Research Team facility and the similarities between the two attacks indicated that the same person or group was responsible. Because of the camp's close proximity to the facility, a government team moved in and took the investigation out of the Hunter's hands. There was still no word on what the government team had found during their investigation.
At least since this place is in the middle of nowhere, they won't have an excuse to take over this investigation, X thought grimly.
"Captain X, sir," a voice called out from behind him. X turned to face the orange armored reploid addressing him, carefully stepping over a severed arm in the process.
"Yes Charger, what is it?"
"We've finished sweeping the camp. There's no sign of anybody here other than us and Unit 0 . . . should go ahead I put in the call to HQ for somebody to send over the forensics team and a recovery unit to deal with the bodies?"
"Yeah, go ahead and put in the call. We've done all we can for now," X said angrily as he stalked by Charger and out the door of the building. Scenes like what X had seen in the refugee camp always managed to arouse a feeling of rage within him; sometimes the feelings of anger were so strong they scared X himself. The feeling of frustration over not being able to arrive in time to help the refugees only fueled his anger over the situation.
The refugee camps had been established after the Nightmare incident to deal with the displaced human and reploid populations caused by it and the Eurasia crisis. Even though most of humanity had fled to underground shelters called warrens during the colony drop, millions of humans had been stranded on the surface as the warrens filled up. The humans left behind were usually the ones who lacked the wealth, influence, or a particular expertise deemed 'vital' to preserving society that could have secured them a place in the warrens. Many of the refugees wound up heading for any nearby Hunter base to seek shelter and their sheer numbers had quickly overwhelmed the Hunter's resources. The camps had been established to help shelter the refugees and put them to work in helping to repair the damage done to the planet by debris form the Eurasia colony. Whether it was moral or not to effectively force the refugees to aid in the reconstruction projects the Hunters initiated was a matter of constant debate, but many thought it better to keep the refugees occupied with some form of work rather than let them sit in the camps all day with little to do.
Eventually the camps began to suffer from overcrowding and the problems associated with it. The Hunters were forced to create numerous smaller camps all over the world to alleviate the overcrowding problem. Regrettably the policy resulted in more camps than the Hunters could afford to protect, even if they hadn't suffered the losses sustained during the Nightmare and Eurasia Crisis. Since it was against procedure to issue weaponry to the refugees, this meant most of the camps were defenseless.
Fortunately the remaining Mavericks created during the Eurasia crisis were scattered and disorganized, which meant attacks on the camps by them were a rare occurrence. On the downside, the lack of a Hunter presence in most areas brought into existence vigilante and militia groups that could be just as dangerous to the refugees as the Mavericks.
The only thing the Hunters could do to try and protect the refugees was to send patrols out to as many camps as they could on a regular basis and monitor the airwaves for any distress calls from a camp
When the Hunter HQ picked up the automated distress call from camp 5, it immediately dispatched X and Zero's units to investigate. Normally deploying both Unit 0 and the 17th would be considered overkill for an attack on a target like a refugee camp, but like many other Hunter units, their ranks had been depleted by recent events. Both units were only at half strength, which made sending them together seem like a wise precaution since there was no information about who was attacking the camp. However they arrived only to find no attackers and the massacred inhabitants of the camp. They had gotten there too late to save anyone - a fact that did little for the morale of the Hunters on the scene.
Charger radioed for the recovery and forensic teams as X stormed through the camp to see if there was something they had missed, some clue as to why the camp had been attacked or the identity of the attackers. He wanted to find who was responsible and bring them to justice, one way or another. Zero's question about who could do something like this echoed in his mind. But that question was not as important to X as two other questions: Why would a person slaughter all these people and, more importantly, how could anyone bring themselves to do it?
As X continued his trek through the camp, the sight of the refugees' remains and the thought of the brutal manner in which they were killed caused him to clench his fists in anger as his mood continued to darken. The sorrow and guilt he had felt about what happened to them when he first arrived had dissolved into a burning rage at the unfairness of the situation. Why? After all the fighting, have we really made a difference at all if something like this happens to innocent people just trying to survive?
X finally came to a halt at an equipment shed as a crimson armored Hunter with a blond ponytail emerged from it. Zero appeared calm and collected, but the glint in his eye and his rigid stance gave away his own feelings about what happened at the camp. Zero was better at concealing his feelings than X, but X had known him long enough to be able to tell when he was upset about something. Zero was angry about the attack – in his opinion taking out unarmed noncombatants was an unforgivable offense – and frustrated by the lack of progress in figuring out who was behind it.
Zero, sensing X's bad mood, regarded his friend for a moment before speaking. "Did you already call in the recovery teams?" Zero asked, keeping his voice neutral.
X took a deep breathe to calm himself and clear his head before responding. "Charger's taking care of it now. Maybe the investigative team will find something we missed. Did your guys find anything on the perimeter sweep?"
"Vape and Flint came across a single set of footprints heading north, away from the camp. They tracked them for about two miles, but lost the trail. No sign of who made them either," Zero replied.
X frowned at that. "That's odd. Most of this area is just wasteland now . . . I wouldn't think anybody would get too far on foot." – X's expression turned hopeful – "Do you think they were made by a survivor?"
"There's no way to be certain. The fact that this area is mostly wasteland makes tracking the prints difficult, even for as short of a distance as we were able to find them. I don't think they were made by whoever attacked though. There aren't many reploids around that can take out this many people and leave before we respond to the distress call . . . Even if that was the case, if the guy had any brains he'd have teleported away and not walked off into the wastelands."
"Which means whoever's responsible could be anywhere by now," growled X. It was virtually impossible to trace a teleport. You could detect when a teleport signal left or arrived in an area, but only with the proper sensors and if you knew which area to scan. If you were really lucky it was possible to obtain a vector for a reploid teleporting out of an area and narrow down the possible destinations. But if the culprits had teleported, it meant that they were most likely dealing with combat reploids since most civilian reploids lacked internal teleporter units. To X however, it didn't make sense to teleport from some distant part of the globe just to attack a refugee camp in the middle of nowhere. "Zero, are there any cities or old bases in this area?"
Zero recalled the maps he had seen for Zone 7 and then nodded his head. "Yeah, there're a couple of cities in this Zone . . . there's also the RRT facility near where the first camp that was attacked - I think there's an abandoned Reploid Forces base in Zone 8 too. They may wind up being dead ends, but it can't hurt to check those places out."
X nodded in agreement. Searching those places would probably be a waste of time, particularly the cities if for no other reason than their sheer size. Maybe Signas would authorize a satellite recon of the areas for unauthorized activity. "It's worth looking into," he paused as a realization dawned on him. "Zero, wasn't Gate's lab in the sector next to this one?"
"Yeah X, but you blew it up pretty good. I don't think we're dealing with one of his creations."
"I hope not. The last thing I want to run into is another High Max."
"He wasn't that tough," harrumphed Zero.
"That from the man who got his butt kicked by an old scientist," X retorted.
"Only because he cheated," mumbled Zero. Even two months after it happened, it still disturbed him how easily Issoc had rendered him helpless. Not even Alia or Douglas fully understood how his systems worked, yet a man Zero had never even heard of before the Nightmare broke out – though Zero felt there was something oddly familiar about him – had been able to freeze his systems easily. The memory of the incident still sent a shiver of fear down Zero's spine. Zero didn't want to think about what might have happened if X hadn't been there. The only time he had felt that helpless before was when Iris lay dieing in his arms. Zero had never been so completely at another person's mercy before. In truth, he had never felt as panicked or afraid as he had at that moment either. He was just glad the nutcase was gone.
Zero shook his head to chase away the memories and focus on the matter at hand. "X, I know we need to provide security for the teams that are being sent in, but there's really no point in both of our units staying here. My team can stay behind as the security detail and the rest of you can go back to base."
"No," X said sharply. "Your team can go back to HQ if you want. I'm going to stay here and see this mission through to the end."
Zero recalled X's demeanor from when they had ran into each other. To somebody unfamiliar with him, X may have seemed to be methodically checking the camp one last time, but to Zero it was apparent that being in this place was getting to his old friend. Lately X had started to seem a little on edge. He was unusually restless and occasionally reacted abnormally, often unnecessarily, harsh towards the people around him. Being in this place just seemed to fuel whatever was making him behave that way, demonstrated by the fact X had to make an effort to calm himself down before talking to him. Zero knew that X was pretty sensitive towards the plights of others and but he rarely allowed himself to get worked up to where he had to make an obvious effort to calm down, especially during a mission. The few times X did get really agitated usually involved either Sigma or a situation where he was unable to do anything but watch as a friend was left for dead.
"Listen X, I really think you should go back to base . . . what happened here really seems to be getting to you. It'd probably be wise if you for you to get away from here for a while."
X gave Zero a puzzled look. What was Zero talking about? He was fine. Sure he was a little angry about what had happened at the camp, who wouldn't be? Was Zero implying that he couldn't deal with the situation? Why would his best friend be thinking something like that? Didn't Zero have any faith in his abilities?
"What are you saying Zero?" X asked with a mix of caution and confusion. He was careful to keep the hurt and anger that welled up inside him at the idea that Zero didn't think he could finish the mission he had been assigned.
"Nothing, X," Zero answered calmly, "You just seem little on edge right now and I thought –"
"I can handle it Zero!" X exploded. "It's not like I haven't had to deal with this stuff before. It's just like any other Maverick attack – some nutcase kills a bunch of people while spouting off some rhetoric about making the world a better place when they don't have a clue on how they intend to improve things beyond just killing anyone they happen to come across. Then we're left to clean up after them. There's nothing that makes this situation any different from the ones just like it in the past."
"Yeah, except that you seem to be taking this one a lot more personally than you have the other times," retorted Zero. "You know as well as I do that the key to a successful investigation or to getting a mission accomplished is to keep a clear head. Right now your feelings seem to be on the verge of getting the better of you and as your friend, I have a right to be concerned when that happens."
X's eyes hardened and he replied coldly, "I have it under control Zero." His expression softened as he continued in a calmer voice, "Whether you like it or not Zero, my team and I are staying here till the investigators and the recovery team leave. Don't worry about me, I'm fine. I've just been a little stressed lately, that's all."
"Fine X, stay if you like, but my team isn't leaving either."
"I don't have a problem with that," X said coldly. "Any suggestions about how we should set up for the arrival of the investigators?" X and Zero briefly discussed the security arrangements and then X relayed them to both units.
Zero wasn't sure how he had expected X to respond to his suggestion about leaving, but he hadn't expected the outburst X gave him. For X to talk like that, something really had to be bothering him. The problem was that trying to figure out what was bothering X was sometimes harder than pulling hen's teeth. X was always trying to take the weight of the world on his shoulders, but when it came to his own personal problems, he was notoriously reticent about allowing people to help him or even just talking about them.
As he and X parted ways to oversee the security preparations, Zero decided that figuring out what was with X would have to wait until later. Now was simply not the right time or place to confront him about it.
XT-203 sped through the wasteland using his dash thrusters. He relished the sensation of speed he felt while using them. He especially liked the feeling he got when he would jump at the end of a dash and sail through the air using the momentum he had built up.
He could sense more of those mechanical beings off in the distance and headed towards their location. He didn't understand how he knew where to find them – of course there wasn't any need to since his ability to detect them wasn't dependant on understanding how he did so – nor did he know how he knew they were called reploids.
The prototype could not remember much prior to his journey through the wasteland. The first clear memory he had was of awakening in a place with a bunch of tents and buildings that was littered with dead bodies. Some of the bodies were mechanical in nature while others were made of some soft, squishy substance. The names for the beings he saw came to him unbidden, reploids and humans.
After that the prototype had sensed something off in the distance and he instinctively knew that it was more reploids. A strange compulsion to go to them swept over him. He had initially begun walking into the wasteland and eventually discovered his ability to dash using the thrusters on his feet. Both modes of travel felt strangely familiar, yet somehow wrong.
The prototype abruptly came to a halt. He sensed reploids from the place he had left. How was that possible? They were all dead when he left. He decided it didn't really matter as the compulsion to head towards his destination caused XT-203 to resume his journey. Even though there was a greater number of reploids back at the place he had started from, there was something about the ones further away that appealed to him more.
XT-203 continued through the wasteland towards his goal, not knowing why he was going there and not caring.
Where could she be? Charger wondered as he searched the camp. X had issued assignments to the 17th and Charger was supposed to be helping with perimeter security. However the person he had been partnered with didn't show up and wasn't answering her communicator. Growing concerned, he had decided to do a quick search of the camp to try and find her.
It probably would have been wiser to just ask the rest of the Hunters to keep an eye out for her, but Charger didn't want to do that except as a last resort. He would feel rather foolish alarming the others only to have the problem turn out to be a malfunctioning communicator. As he passed the entrance of the camp's mess hall, he heard a light sobbing. Charger opened the door and looked inside the building, but saw nothing. He then walked cautiously towards the back of the building. He heard the crying grow louder as he drew closer to the rear of the building.
He wondered what the source of the noise was. Was it a survivor? Were they still hiding from whoever did this?
Charger rounded the corner and found the source of the sobbing, a raven haired girl sitting on the ground, hugging her legs. The girl wore silver trimmed, purple armor that faintly shimmered in the dim sunlight that filtered through the clouds and a headset with a green visor attached to it. On the left shoulder guard of her armor was the crest of the 17th Unit.
"Tempest, are you crying?" Charger asked incredulously.
"No," she began quietly, "Hunters don't cry . . ."
At least not in the middle of mission, mused Charger upon hearing her parrot the phrase Hunter drill instructors often yelled at cadets who were caught shedding tears.
"You're a rotten liar rookie," Charger said sternly. "Didn't you hear X assign us to patrol the perimeter while the investigators and recovery teams did their job?"
"I turned off my communicator . . . I didn't want anyone to know I was crying," she sniffled. "I'm sorry for causing you trouble . . . I just couldn't stand this place anymore."
"Just forget about it, stop crying, and let's do our job already," Charger responded nonchalantly as he turned and began walking toward the camp's perimeter. Tempest stood up and followed sullenly.
"How do you do it?" she asked sadly.
"Do what?"
"Not care what happened here."
He spun around to face Tempest, shocked and upset by what she had said. "Listen rookie," he growled, "you're on really thin ice right now, so don't push it!"
Tempest cringed and timidly muttered an apology. Charger let out a sigh as he calmed down. Charger knew he had probably overreacted to the accusation and that he hadn't handled the whole situation very well.
This was the girl's first mission he reminded himself. It was to be expected that she may not have ready for the scenario she encountered at the camp, especially since the demands for new Hunters had resulted in most recruits going through an accelerated form of basic training – two months instead of the usual seven – that didn't necessarily prepare them as well for what they'd face in the field. Normally someone as inexperienced as Tempest wouldn't have made it into the 17th, but the unit had been desperate enough for new personnel that she had been readily admitted. Not that any of that lessened the sting he felt from being asked Tempest's question.
He didn't know what to do though; he wasn't really used to dealing with people going through some kind of emotional distress because of a mission. This was normally the kind of thing that he let X or Slag handle. What added most to his uneasiness was that he didn't really know her that well and that he was used to her normal demeanor as an irritatingly cheerful chatterbox. For all he knew that wasn't who she really was and she only behaved that way when she was trying to make friends with strangers.
"Stop apologizing rookie," Charger said calmly. "You shouldn't go around accusing other people about not caring though. If someone doesn't care when something like this happens, then they have no business being a Hunter in the first place. Now come on, we really should get started on our patrol."
"Yes sir," Tempest replied in a less gloomy voice, thankful that he didn't seem to be angry at her anymore. She didn't know why she had a tendency to say things the wrong way at the wrong time, but it happened to her more than she liked.
What she had meant to ask Charger how he was able to deal with seeing things like what they found in the camp. Instead it had come out sounding like she was accusing him of not giving a damn about what happened to the refugees. Tempest just couldn't believe that someone could slaughter so many people for no apparent reason and she couldn't describe how sick and revolted she had been upon seeing the remains of the camp's inhabitants.
She now found it hard to believe that not too long ago, she had been eager to prove herself on this mission, her first real mission ever. She had seen it as a chance to prove to everybody that it hadn't been a mistake to let her join the 17th; that she did belong in the unit. It was almost amazing how quickly that eagerness had turned into an overwhelming horror when she arrived at the camp. She knew that things like this could happen, but that didn't prepare her for the reality of it. And to top it all off, she had made a total idiot of herself in front of one the 17th's veteran members. The fact she had been caught crying was embarrassing enough, but then she had to stick her foot in her mouth. Tempest just hoped Charger wouldn't tell the others about what happened.
This is going to be a long day, she thought resignedly.
X watched as the investigators moved through the camp with various scanners. They would frequently stop to mark certain areas, take pictures, and sometimes put an item they believed to be important evidence into plastic bags. Even though he was watching them, X was only half paying attention to them.
He was still mulling over Zero's insinuation that he wasn't keeping a clear head. Sure he had been a little irritable lately, but he wasn't letting it affect his judgment. Where did Zero get off accusing him of that anyways? It wasn't like Zero hadn't had his judgment clouded by his feelings in the past. More than once Zero had chased after entire groups of Mavericks by himself, against better judgment, because he lost his temper. X knew that he may be more prone to emotional outbursts than Zero, but he seldom let his feelings get in the way during a mission. It also hurt to know his best friend thought he couldn't handle the situation.
It wasn't just what Zero had said that was bothering X. It was something to do with the crack he made himself about Issoc. He had meant it as friendly jibe at Zero, though the crimson Hunter still seemed rather sensitive about it, but something about the comment bugged him. It was similar to the feeling he had dismissed when he first saw the bodies in the camp.
X's clearest memory of Issoc was the cold, lifeless gaze of the scientist's body when he stumbled across it in Gate's lab. The eyes were dead, as though no life had ever been in them to begin with and they had evoked the memory of another incident from over a decade earlier, one X had tried to forget and put behind him ever since. Even though Issoc's body hadn't had so much as a scratch on it and the bodies in the camp looked like a crazed swordsman had gotten a hold of them, the dead expression in the eyes were the same. X had seen the eyes of dead reploids before, but the eyes of the refugees looked wrong somehow, just like Issoc's had.
You know what the connection is. You just don't want to admit it, but ignoring it doesn't make it go away, the thought came to him unbidden.
X shook his head. There was no connection. The cause of death for the refugees was clear, someone had cut them up. There was no way that what happened to the refugees could be like what happened to Issoc or at Leguz Island. He was just being paranoid. Maybe Zero was right about him being on edge . . .
No, I'm fine. I've just been under a little stress. So maybe I have been a little irritable lately, it'll pass and then it's back to business as usual, X assured himself. The assurance did little to shake the feeling X was getting that before all of this was over, everyone was going to be under a lot more stress.