"The Svalbard Seed Vault is believed to have been compromised after Tiberium deposits grew under a lower level of the complex. It remains to be seen whether seed samples contained within have been lost."
- W3N News
Ecological Reclamation Depot, Anchorage, B-16
[18/5/2056]
Peter's leg jittered uncontrollably through the meeting. When a co-worker shot him an odd glance, he clamped a hand over his thigh to quell the tremors. They resumed as soon as he let go.
The Lead Reclamation Officer was nattering on about a "realignment of priorities", whatever that meant. The words blended together into an inane buzz that hovered at the edge of his focus.
How the hell am I meant to get from here to the edge of the zone in four days? He had no work permit that would get him on a train, and no chance of getting past the Zone Wall. If only he had some way of talking to his contact face to face, but the Zone Runner had been insistent on using one-off methods of communication. If this window of opportunity slipped by, he could say goodbye to every seeing Manny again. Or to him forgiving me.
Peter clenched his pen, squeezing it in his fist until the plastic casing cracked.
"Peter." A voice cut through the haze of introspection.
"Sorry?" Peter replied. The rest of the technicians gathered around the plain table were staring at him. A portly man at the head of the table, the project lead, shook his head.
"Well, I was just saying, we're facing a fork in the road," the Lead Officer resumed, a little perturbed at having to repeat himself. "New Monaco is eating up a lot of the international reclamation budget, so we're going to have to stretch our assets domestically." He gestured at a map on the wall display, which showed the North American continent, split into wedges. Islands of pale blue dotted the West Coast from Anchorage to La Paz. The border zones were marked by a burnt yellow, which was overwhelmed by angry patches of red in the interior.
"The higher ups want us to close out our work on the DC reclamation, and focus on projects on this side of the continent. I've argued against it; our work in DC is near to completion, and it would be a shame to abandon it now."
"I think you're right, sir." Sharon Burney spoke up. She was a slight, blonde woman with a severe bobbed haircut. "DC is a vital flagship program for the depot."
Ugh. Ass-kisser. Peter fought the urge to roll his eyes.
"What's the uh, where do they want our team to focus instead?" Peter asked tentatively.
The LRO sighed. "As I said before, there are a number of zones of interest." A few of the coloured wedges flashed white. Peter recognised the Cascades Ecological Reserve, the Quinault Autonomous Zone, the Alberta Badlands; all regions straddling the borderline between habitability and ecological collapse.
"Well, uh, what about an area that's a more active population centre?" Peter suggested. His superior frowned, but gestured for him to continue. Peter accessed the group controls for the wall-mounted screen, and changed the filters so it displayed population density. The area at the south-east corner of B-16 flared up with a cluster of white stars against a navy background, fading to a cool orange at the fringes.
"Seattle?" Sharon scoffed. "It's a war zone. The whole metro area was under martial law more days than not last year."
Peter bit his lip, and breathed deeply before continuing. "Yes, but it's also the largest population centre in B-16, and to the east is some of the only arable land south of Vancouver."
The supervisor shook his head. "Burney is right; Seattle's on its last legs. GDI has only a token presence in the city. I can't see us convincing the higher-ups to splash out on such a fraught venture."
"Don't think of it as opening up a whole new front," Peter urged. "The infrastructure is already there. The biggest expenses will be maintenance and security. In the long term, it's a less risky gamble than starting from scratch in a region that might be overrun by the time the foundations have been laid."
Peter could feel his heart pounding in his ears as his superior contemplated this point.
"I can't sign off on this until I know if it's a viable prospect. But-"
Peter's heart leapt. Could I really be this lucky?
"I'd be happy to head down early and see what the situation on the ground is like," he volunteered eagerly. "See if it's viable to expand operations there."
Sharon regarded his enthusiasm with suspicion. "If we are going to work on revitalising a city, instead of undeveloped wilderness, it makes more sense to finish our work in DC, rather than a… shithole… like Seattle. It'll be an important symbolic victory; reclaiming the political centre of the continent from Tiberium, and Nod."
"Exactly; it's a symbol. DC hasn't been at the centre of anything since Nod razed it. People will see through the pageantry pretty quickly when their crops fail and the ground falls out from under them." Peter was surprised by the heat in his voice. You're not gonna get in the way of me seeing Manny again. "B-16 is the largest contiguous blue zone in the world. It makes more sense to shore up living space than spend our time cleaning a deserted monument!"
"Great, it's settled!" The Lead Officer announced with exaggerated enthusiasm, eager to calm the tension in the room. "Gale can go down the coast tomorrow. You can run your harvesters remotely, still. Burney, take charge of the DC clean-up until we have more solid Intel on our new front."
Gulf of Alaska, B-16
[20/5/56]
Taking the monorail south was more alarming than he'd expected. The further he travelled from Anchorage, the starker the difference from life in the Zone became. The light snowfall and dewey moss that covered the rocky cliffs evaporated as the train roared south along the coastline. The pine forests and aquaculture facilities were supplanted by baked grey earth and sparse patches of yellow grass. Tiberium Spikes dotted the countryside, sucking up the cancerous growths deep beneath the earth for processing.
The Zone Wall came into view, a staggering expanse of concrete and metal struts. It was more like a part of the landscape than a human-made construct. The monorail tracks intersected the fortification where it met a craggy bluff. The train plunged into the mountainside, and was swallowed by darkness.
When it re-emerged into daylight, the tracks were running on concrete pillars, high over the cliffside. Dark, foam-topped waves crashed against the base of the pylons. Peter shivered despite himself. As a technician of the reclamation department, he had the utmost faith in GDI engineering… but hurtling at 200 kilometres an hour over that tempestuous abyss still shook him to the core.
This far from Anchorage, the settlements were less gleaming steel and glass, and more stained concrete and rusted roofs. The old American style of blocky concrete apartments predominated. Panels of newer fabricated compounds had been used to patch up holes in the aging structures.
The skyline rose to meet the train as it passed into the city limits. The rails wove through a forest of chimneys and antennas. They came to rest in a cradle of concrete platforms. The Seattle station was a far cry from the industrial marvel of the Depot; a red brick holdout from another century.
Peter stood, and stretched his stiff limbs. 18 hours is too long to stay in one seat. He retrieved his suitcase from the roof rack, and joined the queue of people trickling out onto the platform.
A security agent in a light flak vest stood by a turnstile. She scanned each traveller's credentials as they approached. Peter felt a moment of panic as she waved his work permit under the scanner, but it beeped in what must have been assent, and she waved him through into the terminal disinterestedly.
The terminal was no great feat of public works. The white tile floor was stained and cracked. Old fluorescent bulbs bathed the space in yellowish light. Itinerant figures sat huddled in a shadowed corner beside the ticket screen. As Peter passed by them, he saw the telltale green stain of Tiberium poisoning colouring their skin. Peter's gaze flicked up, and saw one of the men staring right at him, with one brown and one vivid green eye. The man tugged his threadbare scarf up over the disfiguring marks, and scowled at him.
Peter backed away hurriedly, inadvertently setting off a scanner at the entrance as he staggered through it. He leapt in panic, and his bag dropped to the filthy floor. The scanner continued to trill out its warning. A GDI patrolman stationed on the steps outside turned towards Peter. "Can I help you, sir?"
Peter saw his own terrified expression reflected in the soldier's mirrored faceplate. "No, thanks," he stammered, leaning over to pick up his now dust-covered bag. The patrolman grunted, and reset the scanner. The beeping ceased.
A demilitarised Pitbull, with its missile rack and sensor array removed, was idling at the foot of the steps. Peter leapt again when the driver laid on the horn, to the consternation of passers-by.
"Yo, Gale, let's move it buddy!" Peter awkwardly shuffled over to the waiting vehicle. He swung himself up into the passenger seat, and came face to face with his chaperone. The driver was a darker-skinned woman, with narrow brown eyes and a mop of curly brown hair which was shorn short at the sides.
"Christ, who shat in your cereal this morning?" she asked.
"Huh?"
"You look pretty spooked." Her voice softened, and she said reassuringly; "Trust me, the border zones aren't that bad." Peter heard the tinkle of shattering glass from a distance. "Most of the time," she amended.
"You're Penelope Hernandez?" he asked hesitantly. The driver scowled at this.
"Penelope if you're my boss, which you aren't, Pen if you want me to like you. Call me 'Penny' and I'll fucking cut you."
"Alright, Pen," he ventured. "Thanks for picking me up."
"Don't mention it." She turned the wheel, and the ATV veered out onto the cracked street. "Seriously. Don't."
The streets of Seattle were crowded. There were a few electric vehicles crawling through the narrow alleys, but throngs of people made up the largest part of the traffic. It would almost have been quicker to travel by foot, but Penelope had no reservations about clearing their path with frequent blasts of the vehicle's horn.
Eventually they came to a cluster of glass-fronted office buildings enclosed by a concrete barrier. An angular watchtower with a tapered roof surveyed the streets from a corner of the complex. The side of the tower bore a metal sigil, the swooping eagle of the GDI. Spray-painted in red beneath it were the words "God Damned Infidels".
Pen must have seen Peter staring, because she raised her eyebrows and let out a long hissing breath. "Yeah, we get some real friendly sorts around here. Who woulda thought that saving the planet was a controversial goal?"
She steered their vehicle into a bay within the fortifications, and kept the engine idling. "Alright, your accommodations are in the east tower. Reception should have the details." They sat in silence for an uncomfortably long time. Pen fixed him with a prolonged stare. "Get out?" she finally prompted.
"Oh, right," Peter replied as he clambered down out of the high-lifted vehicle, bag in hand. He tried to stammer out his thanks, but instead coughed up a glob of phlegm. Pen laughed. "Oh yeah, you're gonna have to get used to the dust," she warned him as she drove away.
—
If Peter had thought his apartment in Anchorage was spartan, the accommodations in the Seattle barracks made it seem downright luxurious. A young NCO at the front desk directed him to a communal room crammed full of bunks on the third floor of the tower. The paint was peeling off the walls, and the insulation tiles on the ceiling were spotted with damp. A handful of people in fatigues were already inside the barracks when they entered. They paid little mind to Peter's entrance.
"Emergency respirators are under each bunk," the NCO informed him. "There's an ethernet connection in the corner there. You'll have exclusive access to it from 0600 to 1400 on weekdays," the NCO told him. "Rest of the time, you gotta fight these guys for it." The uniformed woman pointed a finger at a well-muscled man in a tank top, who flipped them off. "Roster's on the wall there. Hernandez will be back here at 1500 tomorrow to give you the tour. Let me know if you need anything before then."
—
The tour of the city's reclamation facilities impressed on Peter how dire an effort would be required to get things up and running. Peter was beginning to regret how much he'd oversold the state of existing infrastructure. I need to make sure I've still got a job with the Depot after I get Manny back.
An attempt had been made at the construction of a Zone Wall on the outskirts of the city. The fortification was a bare thirty feet tall, and many sections were incomplete. Tiberium had crept through the gaps in the open scaffolding, and taken root in the decrepit outer suburbs of the city. To the east, it filled the floors of valleys and climbed the sides of hills like some sort of noxious weed. Within the city limits, swampy depressions had filled with water, growing into stagnant pools that swarmed with disease-spreading insects. They stayed well away from these nexuses of corruption.
Hundreds of apartment blocks and warehouses were crumbling under the creeping advance of the crystal. Mounds of leaking garbage bags had piled up on many street corners. It was hard to tell the inhabited structures from the abandoned structures; they were all concrete rubble and exposed rebar.
The city's power plant complex was severely overtaxed. The network of sonic emitters that ringed the city was of an old, inefficient design, and ran infrequently. It did little to keep the depredations of Tiberium at bay.
It was a start, but not very much of one. Creating a buffer zone between the city and the contaminated wastes would be vital in clawing back a livable space from the wilderness. Deciding where to draw the line would mean clearing additional thousands of acres of land of Tiberium, or condemning millions of people to life outside the walls. Either way, it was like choosing between cutting off a limb or risking the patient's life.
Their circuit of the city took the better part of the day, and by the time they were finished, Peter was soaked with sweat and stinking from the miasma of the city. He wanted nothing more than to return to his meagre accommodations and wash himself in the cold sputtering water of the block's showers.
"Hey, we're gonna go unwind at this little hole-in-the-wall place nearby," Penelope slapped him on the arm. "You should come along."
"I'm good, thanks. I'm just going to head back to the barracks,"
"Nah, c'mon! You'll be more fun with a couple of drinks in you!" she cajoled him. "It's nearby, right up against the Wall." Peter's head snapped back round to face Hernandez. The meeting time with his contact was rapidly approaching, and this would give him more of a chance to scope out a way through the Zone Wall that didn't lead directly to a painful death.
"Oh… yeah, I guess I can come along," he capitulated, trying to sound as casual as possible. If Pen was surprised by his abrupt change of heart, she didn't show it.
"Great! Hey fam, the new guy's coming along." The skeleton staff of engineers and technicians that constituted Seattle's reclamation staff let out a cheer.
They walked for around ten minutes through the darkening city streets. Pools of illumination from the infrequent streetlights lit their way. Eventually they came to the base of an old freeway overpass, which ran across the top of the Zone Wall. A few rusted car chassis sat abandoned on its cracked tarmac. Beneath the dilapidated overpass was their destination.
"Ah, so you meant a literal hole in the wall," Peter remarked on catching sight of it, which earned him a wry smile from Pen.
The bar was nestled between two concrete support pillars. It looked to have been crudely assembled from parts of old shipping containers and prefab structures. Streaks of rust marred its front, and an intermittently flickering neon sign marked it as The Bridge. An aloof bouncer in blue coveralls patted them down as they entered.
The inside of the bar was no less shabby. A polished chunk of concrete served as a benchtop upon which sat a cluster of dusty bottles and glasses. The cramped space was lit by a handful of algae lamps hanging from the ceiling, which cast a shifting, aquamarine glow. Their effect gave Peter the strong sensation of walking through a sunken shipwreck.
Pen went to the bar while her colleagues guided Peter to a small booth, which seemed to be cut from the end of a shipping container. Hernandez made her way to the bar, exchanged a few words with the bartender, and returned with a handful of bottles and glasses. She set about pouring shots of a thick, black liquor. Peter accepted the glass placed before him hesitantly, and downed it in tandem with the others. He immediately regretted it, as the acrid taste of something burned his throat. He let out a spluttering cough, which the workers around him laughed good-naturedly at. Someone slapped him on the back.
Pen immediately began pouring a second round of shots. When Peter gave her a quizzical look, she shrugged and said; "Gotta get them down before curfew," by way of explanation. Peter reached for a bottle of beer instead. A peeling label marked it as a "Seaview Brew:. He cracked the lid and began sipping. It tasted faintly of mushrooms.
"So, what do you think of our fair city?" Pen asked after she had downed another shot.
Peter took a sip while he mulled over how to answer diplomatically.
"It's… lively," he finally replied.
The crew of engineers chuckled. "It's a shithole," a bearded man seated to his left growled. Peter gave a half-hearted shrug, which prompted another round of laughter.
After a half hour of good-natured heckling directed at the new guy, the conversation turned to a more serious bent.
"Do you really think the city is anything but a lost cause?" an older man with slate grey hair asked.
Peter frowned, and took a long sip of his beer. Did he have hope for Seattle? He'd come here on false pretences, pursuing his own personal agenda… but being amongst the people of the city and walking its polluted streets had made the plight it faced startling real.
"I wouldn't be here if I didn't think there was hope," he finally declared. No-one responded immediately, but the mood at the table shifted perceptibly.
—
After several hours of mild banter and heavy drinking, Peter's bladder was fit to burst. He stood abruptly, staggering slightly, and was met by a chorus of objections.
"No, stay! The night is still young! The curfew isn't for another hour!" went the general gist of the arguments.
"I need to take a leak!" He half-shouted over the din. With some effort, he extricated himself from the crush of sodden workers, and edged his way out of the dingy establishment. Once he had passed the scowling bouncer, he crept out of the man's line of sight and into a shadowed alleyway.
He staggered up to the corner where the overpass met the Zone Wall. The old concrete was weather-stained and pitted. He ran his hands along it as he walked, over metal supports and faded graffiti. After a few minutes of walking down dark side alleys, he found what he was looking for.
A rusted metal grille covered some sort of outlet pipe where the wall intersected the asphalt of the road. A buildup of mucky plant matter had caked the grate. Peter knew, from his experience supervising the construction of similar walls across the continent, that this grate likely led to an outlet pipe on the far side of the fortification. Normally, these weaknesses in the fortification would be guarded by an array for sonic emitters on the far side, but in a city as run down as this there was a decent chance he'd be able to make his way through it unimpeded.
Peter knelt down over the grate, and began scraping away the accumulated muck. The clumps gave off a pungent smell of something rotten as they broke apart, and he had to turn his face away to avoid losing the contents of his stomach.
When he had cleared a large enough portion, he drew a small screwdriver from his pocket and began working at the screws holding the metal grate in place. A few were so badly rusted they broke apart into reddish flakes as he twisted the tool. Another had locked into place so thoroughly he had to turn the screwdriver with both hands. Peter was caught by surprise when it came loose. The screwdriver shot out of his hands, which scraped against the rough asphalt.
Peter let out a gasp of pain. His knuckles had been scraped bloody and raw. He pounded his thigh with a clenched fish, hoping to syphon off his frustration, but all he achieved was a worse ache in his hands. He wiped the bloody cuts clean on his shirt, hoping the accumulated filth hadn't contained anything horribly infectious.
He gritted his teeth against the pain, and tried to lift the grate before his nerve failed him. The metal cover was heftier than he'd anticipated, and it shrieked against the walls of the pipe. Peter's arms ached with the strain, and he had barely cleared the entrance before it slipped from his hands and came crashing down with a tremendous clang. He glanced around with alarm, but no sirens blared and no soldiers came running. His heart was pounding in his ears as he lowered himself into the foetid pipe. Within its confines, the air was oppressively rank, and Peter gagged with every breath. Cursing his fate, he began to inch feet first through the sloping channel, trying not to think too hard about the slick substance that coated the walls around him.
While it was imposing, the Zone Wall was still only several metres thick at its base, and Peter was sure he'd be emerging on the other side before long. That was until the conduit made a sharp turn, and Peter found his shoulders wedged between unyielding walls of concrete.
The tight fist of panic gripped his chest. Peter took great gulping breaths of stinking air, but none of it seemed to be entering his lungs. The concrete walls were crushing the life out of him. He was going to die here, trapped in a stagnant prison of his own making, for some unlucky reclamation worker to discover when a sensor pinged a blockage in the pipe. Or, more likely, he would be forgotten entirely, and no-one would ever find his corpse.
And I'll never see Manny again.
That one thought shot through his brain like lightning, sweeping the panic from his mind. Peter forced himself to steady his breathing. Slow, steady, in, out. With each exhalation, the walls of the tunnel seemed to relax their hold on him, and he soon found he was even able to move his shoulders.
With some undignified squirming, Peter wriggled his legs around the sharp bend. His foot slid over a slick patch of something unmentionable, then hit a round depression; a smaller inlet, maybe? He hooked his heel into it. With small, shuffling movements of his legs, he was able to haul his body into the next portion of the pipe. From there gravity did the rest of the work, and he came tumbling out into blissfully fresh air.
He barely had time to rejoice in his freedom. As he landed in an uncomfortable heap on the grey earth, a stark white light fixed him from above. Peter blinked, dumbstruck in the sudden radiance.
"What's happ-" his question was cut off as a baton struck him in the back of the knee. He dropped to the ground, shouting in agony. Something heavy and black was pulled over his head, smothering him, and the world was snuffed out.