Anchorage, Blue Zone 16
[16/5/2056]
Peter Gale stepped from the glass-fronted foyer of the apartment complex and into the frosty Alaskan morning, pulling his navy blue coat around him as he quick-stepped it to the monorail station. His narrow face was pale with the cold, and dew was settling in his dark, silver-streaked hair.
The paved courtyard that separated his apartment building from several identical multi-tiered hexagonal mountains was thronging with people today. A wave of humanity flowed through the canals that were the streets of Anchorage. Peter slotted into the crowd, letting it sweep him along to his destination.
The monorail station was a cathedral of gleaming glass and steel, and was as packed as the courtyard. A mass of dark blue coats and suits filled the arched expanse, jostling each other as they flowed onto the platform or up the ramps to nearby suspended stations. Silver, snub-nosed snakes soared along the rails that ran amongst the steel buttresses of the station.
A silver bullet of a train shot past the crowds thronging on the platform, a gleaming streak of metal which growled to a halt as it pulled into the station. Hydraulics hissed as automatic doors swung open, and the dark mass poured into the train.
There was standing room for around forty in the carriage, but Peter still found himself crowded into a corner, pressed up against a plexiglass window. The doors hissed shut again, and Peter felt the floor shift as the train started up. Bright light lanced through the window as the train shot out of the station, and Peter's eyes took a moment to adjust to the glare.
The train was gliding along a strand of metal that arced through the Alaskan skyline. It passed over hexagonal mountains of stacked apartments, compact industrial complexes, and a few precious patches of parkland. The city was enclosed by a circle of concrete and metal, one end open to the dark roaring waters of the bay.
Peter gazed past the city wall, where the notably artificial and geometric landscape gave way to rolling hills of patchy green and yellow farmland. Beyond that he saw the eerie emerald glow on the horizon, giving the sunlight a faint green tint.
Approaching rapidly in the distance was the colossal and forbidding profile of the Ecological Reclamation Depot, glimmering with a sickly, pale green colour in the tainted sunshine. The train passed under the shadow of the depot and into a tunnel that bisected the lower floors of the tower. A moment of darkness was supplanted by harsh fluorescent light as they came to a rest in the station.
Stepping from the gleaming train interior and out into the chrome glow of the station, Peter could taste the tang of ozone in the air blowing from the tunnel entrance; a hallmark of an imminent ion storm. The others on the narrow platform seemed to have picked up on it too. They hurried towards the waiting elevators, collars up and faces down. Peter did likewise, trying to escape the uncomfortable sensation of static electricity crawling over his skin.
Peter finished the commute to his post with a short elevator ride to the Reclamation Unit. The main control room was, as always, in a state of finely balanced chaos. Technicians ran back and forth between control stations. Banks of wide screen monitors sprawled across every wall, displaying masses of data and video feeds, and virtual reality suites allowing drivers to control heavy equipment from miles away.
Two scientific advisors on a screen were having a video conference with a third who sat shaking his head a few metres away from Peter.
"So what you're suggesting is a kind of 'Tiberium Control Network'?" he asked incredulously.
"Basically, yes," an older scientist with grizzled white hair on the conference screen replied.
"Respectfully, that's a completely ridiculous suggestion!" the scientist next to Peter rebutted. "We've been struggling to contain Tiberium for the past sixty years, and we've been behind the ball the entire time! We simply lack the expertise, knowledge, or the technology to accomplish what you propose. Even if Kane himself were to turn up on our doorstep and hand us the Tacitus, we would still be years behind…"
Peter pushed past the arguing scientists and into his cubicle. It was a small, carpeted box, crammed in alongside a dozen identical spaces. The swivel chair squeaked and dropped a few inches when he dropped into it. He pressed the enter key of the keyboard that sat on a plain plastic desk, and the three darkened screens standing on metal frames behind the desk flickered to life.
A small blue rectangle appeared in the middle of the centre screen, and the words Login Authentication Required flashed beneath.
Peter tapped his password out and hit the enter key once more. The screen blinked again, and the box expanded to fill the whole screen, which lit up to display the familiar GDI eagle. Peter took in the depressing tableau that was his workspace; a stale cup of instant coffee that lay abandoned on the desk, and the picture on display in the digital photo frame next to the monitor.
Four people were clustered together, arm in arm. A younger Peter, his hair jet black and face unlined. In his arms was a stunning, chestnut skinned young man with curly hair. Behind them was an older couple, man and woman, smiling and dressed in matching cosy sweaters.
He touched the photo fondly. The faces distorted as his finger brushed the display.
The chime of an alert broke his contemplative reverie. A notification had appeared on the screen; one of his harvesters in the operations zone on the East Coast was complaining of a jammed tread. He flagged it for a repair drone to inspect, and pulled up the camera feed from the next harvester in his convoy. The autonomous vehicle rumbled over piles of rubble, scraping up clusters of crystalline growth for storage inside internal hoppers when it encountered them. The stained facade of the White House stood forlornly in the distance, bare tree trunks framing the decrepit structure. The Atlantic Seaboard had been hit hard during the first stages of the Third Tiberium War; as the home of the UN Headquarters and one of the few intact pre-war governments, it had been a symbol of GDI's hegemony over the downtrodden peoples of the world.
Purging the city of any insurrectionist elements had been a vital symbolic victory for the world government in the years after the war, but the regions around were still too heavily contaminated. The former seat of the US government now kept a lone vigil over the abandoned capitol, with unmanned drones the only sign of activity in its streets.
The tedium of the work soon began to wear on him. The miracle of automation meant that there was very little for a remote operator to do. For the most part, he was a glorified clerk, rubber-stamping any procedures the robots thought they needed human oversight for. Peter found his head slumping, so he took a swig of the cold coffee, and immediately regretted it.
There was a flicker of movement in the corner of the screen. Peter turned the camera to focus on it.
A roiling mass of liquid detached itself from the ruin of a dessicated tree. Its fluid flesh bubbled like melting styrofoam.
Visceroid, Peter thought with a surge of revulsion. He was thankful he'd never seen one of the twisted monstrosities in the flesh.
Peter pulled up a sub-menu, and selected "free-fire autonomy". The harvester's electronic brain brought the machine gun mounted on the chassis to bear. The .50 cal weapon chattered, peppering the creature with bullets. Chunks of its liquid innards were ejected by the impact of the rounds, and splattered the concrete rubble behind it. The undulating flesh reformed around the bullet holes, and the visceroid lunged towards the source of its injury. A pseudopod of semi-liquid flesh lashed out at the barrel of the weapon, but was shredded into mincemeat as a fresh burst of fire was unleashed.
Peter had done a unit on visceroid biology in college. The ever-mutating creatures had continued to evolve since then, but from what he understood, each creature was more akin to a colony of polyps, animated by clusters of bacteria. They had a kind of distributed intelligence, like an octopus. The undifferentiated masses of tissue served as both motor and sensory neurons, so as the colony grew in size, so did the visceroid's intelligence, and hostility.
In Peter's experience, the best way to incapacitate them was to spread their component parts over a wide enough area that each individual colony of cells grew too stupid to move.
He saw what looked like a human skull tumble out of the immobile mass, and fought back a wave of nausea. The stale coffee might have had something to do with that, though.
Peter flagged the visceroid's remains for incineration by one of the clouds of hovering drones. Again, it was something an algorithm could easily handle, but the higher ups were wary of giving control of deadly weapons to any sufficiently advanced automated systems, for obvious reasons.
He surveyed the cracked ground for more signs of movement, but found the city streets eerily empty once more. He instructed the harvester to continue its automated route, and stared at a patch of bluish cloud cover.
He'd heard about the carnage wreaked in Bern; nearly two decades of reclamation work undone in seconds. But that was the sort of destruction you expected from an alien invasion. Brutal, senseless; inhuman. What really kept him up at night was Washington. How could other human beings be that senseless?
Wherever Nod had spread, they'd left Tiberium like a cancer; looting silos and destroying refineries. Even when their invasion had been repelled, the invasive mineral had had plenty of time to spread. Verdant parks were now overrun by corrupted plant and animal life, the streams choked as colossal crystalline growths sucked the earth around them dry.
How far gone were the acolytes of Kane that they considered this corrupted landscape a vision of heaven?
—
The apartment building doors hissed open, revealing the raging storm outside. Harsh lightning crackled, and rain hissed against the doorframe and tiles. Peter darted through the entrance, head bowed against the howling wind. The steel doors shut behind him, though not before the antechamber had been completely drenched. He doffed his coat, and stripped off the black gloves he was wearing. Holding them at arm's length, as though they were toxic, he rushed to a receptacle in the wall, and dumped the outer-garments inside.
Less than a minute later, a low, keening siren began. It rose into an ear-splitting wail, undulating mournfully like the unnatural wind outside.
A holographic strip at the top of the wall lit up, illuminating the room in a dull red glow. Ion Storm Incoming read the electronic ticker tape. Seek shelter immediately. The message repeated.
Shards of faintly glowing green crystal began to rain down alongside the raindrops. They shattered against the thick windows.
Peter lifted his arms and let the guardsman stationed at the elevator wave a scanner over him. The metal wand warbled, but the kid holding it seemed satisfied that Peter wasn't contaminated. A few more citizens had dashed inside while he was scanned. They formed an orderly queue, waiting for their turn.
The elevator raced along the corner truss of the pyramidal structure. The clear bubble afforded him a breathtaking view of the city. Anchorage was lost behind a veil of turbulent grey clouds. Flashes of indigo lightning lit the thunderheads intermittently. Sheets of silver rain poured down from the heavens, shot through with verdant sparks.
Peter shuffled into his apartment, and sighed. The place was a stark cube of carpet and off-white plating. A simple kitchenette overlooked the sloping side of the apartment complex. A metal door to the left concealed the cramped bathroom.
The bed was a thin dark mattress on an articulated frame which protruded from a cubbyhole in the wall. It was currently folded into a sofa configuration. Peter fetched a beer from the fridge and dropped down onto the lumpy cushions. One wall panel darkend, and faded to a feed of William Frank interviewing a GDI spokesperson. Might as well watch a puppeteer with a sock on each hand, Peter scoffed.
He took a long swig of his beer, and grimaced. Yeast was one of the simplest things to lab-grow in large quantities, but the state-supplied intoxicant had a faint, soapy aftertaste that he'd never been able to overlook. Bad beer is still better than being sober, he reminded himself, and drained the rest of the bottle.
Peter dropped the green glass bottle into the recycler, and began browsing the entertainment feed with a fresh brew in hand. W3N dominated the news streams, and he'd had enough of William Frank's suspiciously youthful face for tonight. Peter flipped over to movies. The pickings were slim. A few major Hollywood studios had limped through the last few decades, reliant on UN grants for funding, which ensured that the only films being produced were glorified propaganda.
A header image for The 32nd was displayed prominently on the homepage. A helmeted man with an artful amount of stubble was depicted shouting orders over a mud-streaked background. Peter shrugged, and clicked play.
From what he could gather, the film was about a platoon that had perished in Manchester, holding the line against an overwhelming number of alien infantry. Their sacrifice had bought a majority of the civilian populace time to evacuate. Peter vaguely remembered hearing about it on the news at the time.
The signal was weak. On every band, all they heard was news of defeat after defeat. Even the GDI propagandists had given up putting a hopeful spin on it. "The Rout of Humanity" was the phrase repeated most often. He couldn't see any other end for them than extinction.
Manny was his strength in those terrifying weeks, trapped in a basement with the stink of fear and death all around him. When an explosion rocked their shelter, raining concrete dust on their heads, Manny would wrap Peter in his strong arms, enfolding him in warmth and comfort.
When the knocking on the metal barricade started, everyone in the shelter was convinced they were about to be slain or devoured by an alien monstrosity. Manny reasoned that an extraterrestrial was unlikely to knock politely, in favour of blasting the door down, and had opened it to reveal a young artilleryman who seemed as frightened and dust-streaked as they were. Manny laughed and welcomed him to the shelter.
Peter's hand was aching. He realised he was clenching the bottle tight enough to crack it. With some substantial effort, he relaxed his grip, and a trickle of blood ran from the palm. Cheap, recyclable crap, he grumbled as he dropped the second bottle in the recycler, and began bandaging his hand.
On a whim, he propped his handheld device against the wall, behind the sink, and dialled "Home."
A row of dots travelled across the transparent screen while the call was ….. There was a click, and a grainy video feed of a woman with wiry grey hair appeared. A smile split her lined face.
"Petey!" she crowed. "Alan, come here, Petey's on," she called to someone outside the room.
"Hey Mom," Peter smiled sadly as he said it. Something about speaking with his parents had a way of reducing him to a shy child again. "How've you been?"
"Oh, can't complain," she said cheerfully, but her smile slipped a fraction of an inch. "They cut protein rations again last week, so your father has been quite grumpy."
"I'm sorry, Mom. I'll… I'll send you some more money today, get yourself something-"
"You'll do no such thing, Peter!" she scolded him, but there was love in it. "You need to save that money. For Manny." A bead of light glimmered in the corner of his eye. I'm not gonna cry in front of Mom, he told himself, and blinked it away.
"Yeah. Manny. Have you spoken to him?" he asked in a flat voice.
"I know he misses you, dear," his mother said softly. "You are trying to get him up to Anchorage, aren't you?"
"Yeah, of course! I'm doing- I've got plans, Mom, I'm just… it's taking a little while." The bead of light returned to his vision, and he rubbed at it without thinking.
"What have you done to your hand?" His mother's voice rose an octave, but Peter wasn't paying attention to it. There was a red dot, wavering on the rain-spotted glass of his kitchen window. The light blinked out, and he was left gawking at the storm. A few seconds passed. He was beginning to think it had just been an optical illusion , when the red glow reappeared.
"Uh, it's nothing. I gotta go; sorry!" He ended the call and rushed to the window. The red light flickered on and off, shifting into an ellipse, then back into a dot. Peter squinted; the booze was really getting to him. He realised belatedly that he was staring at the sensor light of a window washer drone, through the ripple of rainwater pouring down the glass pane.
The little robot was suction cupped to the window, but its tiny mechanical body was being buffeted by the raging winds. Its sensor light was flickering, and this time Peter realised it wasn't just the distortion of the heavy downpour; the light was blinking sequentially, in a deliberate pattern.
"Oh!" He fumbled with his hand tablet, and started jotting down what he saw as a sequence of lines and dots. It took a few cycles of repetition, but eventually he was pretty confident he had it right. He converted the scribbles to plain text, then fed it through a morse code algorithm he found online after a second of browsing.
Peter nearly dropped the device. His hands shook as he took in the words on the screen.
Seattle Wall. Five Days.
Peter gritted his teeth, and looked out the window again. The little robot had vanished, no doubt whipped away into the night.
Okay, so we're doing this.