Tremble

Baird was ready to piss himself.

When the grindlift landed in Nexus, Baird and Tanner had landed in the middle of a work field. Humans mindlessly chipped away at rocks while Locust, what seemed like a whole army of them, stood watch.

It was a short skirmish. The Gears didn't stand a chance on the Locust home turf. Despite grindlifts raining from the ceiling, none of them landed nearby for support, and the two Gears were easily outnumbered and overrun.

Baird had thought the Locust would kill them. Instead, he was being treated like a prisoner and currently held in a tall metal pod, his head throbbing from taking a punch. But his jump mate was in worse shape.

"Tanner, hey, you okay, man?" Baird called. Tanner took a direct hit to his shoulder before they'd been captured.

"Fine," he replied, winded. "Okay, you're the expert here, Baird. Why are they taking prisoners? What are they trying to mine in this place?"

"How the hell should I know? This completely goes against everything we know about Locust."

For fourteen years, the Locust had proven themselves as murdering machines. Why they were taking prisoners now, he couldn't even begin to guess. They were supposed to kill all human life, not enslave it.

Tanner made a surprised noise and before Baird could ask him what happened, something clanged on the top of his pod and he could see, through the open slat in the door, that he was being winched into the air. Immediately he crouched to feel for hinges along the bottom—he was not falling to his death—and was relieved when he found none.

The pod came to a harsh stop and, with the groan of machinery, the scenery began to move horizontally. He tried to see out the small slat but he could only see the sickly yellow light from imulsion and the bases of stalactites.

"Where the hell are these bastards taking us?" Baird wondered aloud, hoping Tanner would offer a bright idea. He didn't reply.

Baird took a deep breath. He would be okay; he just had to figure this out. Something would come to him. It always did.

Now that he had some quiet, Baird realized he hadn't heard any radio chatter since entering the tunnels. For all his bravado, he couldn't stop his hands from shaking, and tried twice to activate his ear-piece.

"Cole, you receiving? It's Baird. Cole?" He waited for a moment. "Delta—anyone? Damn it!"

He hated when comms were dead, and it seemed to happen a lot more now than before.

We're underground. Everyone's in the dark right now and I'm sure Control is doing everything they can to reestablish contact. If they were smart, they sent an engineer down here with a portable comm tower. Or maybe if we just blow a hole in the ceiling—yeah, blowing things up sounds good.

The scenery was starting to slow down, Baird noted. After a few minutes, they came to a stop and the pod began to lower. He braced himself. What if we land in some Locust colosseum and they expect us to fight to the death for their entertainment?

"Tanner, you still there?"

No answer.

The pod set against the ground with a shudder and Baird tried to get a look. It was bright, wherever he was, but crawling with grubs. He saw more pods beyond them. Four grubs detached from the group and started toward him. He pressed his back against the opposite wall, but there wasn't much room to run.

One stopped to peer into the slat and he barely resisted spitting on it. That wouldn't improve his chances of survival, whatever they happened to be. He was unarmed in the Locust base. What were the odds he could escape in one piece? And what about Tanner? A wounded shoulder wouldn't help fighting their way out.

The grubs communicated somehow—with grunts and hisses and a few Tyran words Baird hardly recognized—and then his pod was moving again. The smell of the area was overwhelming; it reeked of death and excrement. Human or Locust, he wondered. The movement stopped and boots clattered away from him. He pressed against the slat again, maneuvering to get a better view.

He still couldn't see shit.

It wasn't just being without a weapon—he held a Lancer twenty-four out of twenty-six hours every day for fourteen years, he was feeling vulnerable—but the unknown that worried him. Why did the grubs need prisoners? What were they going to do to him?

He tried the radio again. "Cole, come on, man. Someone's gotta be out there. I'm stuck in some grub POW camp and I have no idea where Tanner is. Don't leave me here, man."

Boots clambered against the metal floor again. Baird closed his eyes to better concentrate, separating the footsteps and counting four grubs coming toward him. Okay, he had to take the chance. He had to fight his way out somehow. Maybe some of Cole's Thrashball moves had worn off on him.

He waited, the tension rising in his limbs. His hands balled into fists but he had to look calm—they would be able to see through the slat that he was preparing to attack. The boots came closer.

Come on, you ugly bastards.

They stopped beside him, just out of view. The screech of metal told him they were either transporting a prisoner or coming for another one.

"No! Stay away from me!" Tanner yelled.

Baird's stomach dropped. There was a scuffle beside him and he hoped Tanner was trying to fight, but judging by the terrified gasps Baird could hear, the grubs were wrestling him to his feet.

Baird banged his fists against the door. "Hey! Tanner, what's going on?"

"Get away from me—don't touch me!"

"Fight them, damn it!"

"N-no, don't—"

Two rounds discharged and Baird felt the vibration carry through the pod. He felt numb, his eyes bigger than usual. He couldn't blink. He couldn't move.

They couldn't. Not Tanner. Shit, I didn't even really know the guy.

He wanted to call out, to know if those were warning shots or if Tanner was really…

A grub stepped up to Baird's pod. He jumped back, his back colliding with the metal in a sharp movement; it sounded like a gunshot in his ears. He flinched.

"Scum," the Locust gurgled, baring its rotting teeth at him.

"Fuck you," he spat with more courage than he felt. A fine tremble started in his legs, climbing up his torso and into his arms. He'd never felt so powerless in his life.

The grub chuckled and walked away, but now the group was dragging something. Tanner. Shit.

Adrenaline couldn't even overcome the feeling of dread. He wanted that rush that would numb him in a good way, not the cold he felt now; he wanted the adrenaline that would switch his body to auto-pilot, to let him function without over thinking. But the dread had firmly settled in his gut.

No one knew he was trapped here, he couldn't run, he couldn't fight. He was either going to die or become part of the grub's working colony. They'd proven he was expendable if he put up a fight. The humans down here looked mindless, completely brainwashed, and he was not going to end up like that.

He hit his fists against the inside of the pod. "Hey, is anyone out there? Come on, anything that's not a grub—anything at all!"

He almost wished a crazy old man would answer him, tell him it was no use screaming, and then conspire to escape. Even if he was betrayed in the end, just like in the movies he used to watch, Baird could handle that better than solitude. He needed something to distract him from the fear.

No one would think to look for him, not until it was all over. Maybe they would just assume he was dead. If he stayed here, he would die in the flood. Jacinto was coming down whether he was stuck in a Locust camp or not. There was nothing he could do to stop it. He couldn't even raise his squad on the radio.

His breathing started to pick up. He crouched, holding his head in his hands. No, I can't afford to hyperventilate right now. Shit, calm down. Calm down. Cole won't leave me here, he wouldn't.

But even Cole could assume he was dead.

The tremble turned into uncontrollable shaking, like he was back in the damned grindlift. His teeth chattered, his muscles seized at random, and he dug his fingers into his thighs. Get it under control, man. Deep breaths. Relax. It'll be fine.

But Baird had always been realistic; he didn't, he couldn't, fool himself about anything. Just once he wanted to try that optimism shit Cole always tried to feed him. He wanted to believe his friend would come for him, he wanted to believe that the Locust wouldn't come back until then, he wanted to believe that he wasn't staring death in the face.

He'd been through a lot of shit, but he'd never been alone while facing the monsters. Cole, or someone, was always at his back. Now he didn't have that support. The grubs got Tanner, and Baird was thankful it wasn't Cole, even if he felt shitty for it. For the first time since he joined the COG, Baird was alone. He never realized how much he had come to hate it.