"Damage report!" Rachel ordered between grunts as she picked herself up from the floor.

"We've been hit, ma'am." One soldier pointed out.

"Well duh. Where were we hit?"

"Umm... Well... the bridge." The soldier replied, gesturing toward the large green blob that had appeared in the center of the command station.

"Okay, where else?"

Another kid stepped forward. "They probably didn't hit the air bubble generator, ma'am."

"Seeing as we're all still breathing, that's a pretty safe assumption. Now does anyone have news that isn't completely obvious?" The room fell silent. "Of course not."

A hand shot into the air, waving wildly. Rachel sighed. "Yes?"

"What should we do about that?" A girl asked, looking worriedly at the unknown object.

"PERMISSION TO POKE IT WITH A STICK?" Another soldier asked enthusiastically, stick at the ready.

"What? No. No touching it, at least not until 74.239 gets a good look at it."

"Can I shoot it?"

"No! Fanny, will you get these operatives out of here? Go… scout the area or something. See what else got hit."

"You heard her! Let's go!" Fanny took the group of soldiers out of the bridge. Rachel was left with just the communications officer and a couple guards at her side. And, of course, the giant green blob.

"You know, maybe I should poke it with a stick..." She muttered to herself.

"What was that ma'am?" One of her guards asked.

"Nothing." She turned towards the comm's officer. "Why haven't any other stations reported in?"

"Presumably, they are assessing the damage."

"Well put me back on loudspeaker." She ordered, picking up the headset that had fallen off her in the crash.

"You're on."

Rachel thought for a minute about what to say before deciding it would be best to get straight to the point. "DON'T TOUCH IT!" Her booming voice echoed as the speakers fed it back into the mic. "Now, I want all stations to report in. Don't leave your location unless you absolutely need to. We survived. For now at least."

She returned the mic to the officer and prepared for the inevitable maelstrom of frightened children who were about to appear on the screens in front of her.

–|–|–|–|–|–|–|–|–|–|–

"Come on! Keep going!" Fanny yelled to the worried soldiers behind her. "And for Pete's sake, put your weapons away. This is recon. Nothing's going to attack us."

"But..." One soldier quietly spoke up. "But what if something jumps out from the dark?"

Fanny stopped dead in her tracks, causing the less attentive operatives in the group to stumble. "Dark? DARK?! What dark? The power's still on. We can see fine, you idiot!" She gestured around the brightly-lit corridor they were traveling down. "Now COME! ON!"

As they pressed forward, Fanny's realized her pep-talk had done nothing to effect the group's walking speed and lack of confidence. Though she dared not show it, Fanny, too, was worried. Their enemy was unknown. It didn't matter that she'd be able to see the attack, she still had no clue how to defend against it. Though her weapon remained holstered, she kept her hand on the grip, ready to draw it at a moment's notice.

Just in case.

–|–|–|–|–|–|–|–|–|–|–

Even the communications officer, an operative that specialized in understanding speech, could not make out a single sentence from the dozens of operatives all speaking at once. Rachel, however, was used to this, and had a solution. "Mute all but screen one." With one press of a button, the incomprehensible white noise became a single, barely comprehensible, screaming voice.

"-and there's a breach but we're all still breathing but 313 passed out and hit 22 when he fell and there's a big green thing on the floor that almost hit Kenny, but it didn't, and I know you said 'don't touch it' but I'm not sure if shooting it counts as touching it and-"

"Okay. Okay. Listen." The panicking girl on the other side of the screen continued rambling. "HEY!" Eventually, Rachel got her attention, and the girl stood quiet, waiting for instructions. "Get 313 a band-aid and wake him up. Don't worry about the breach. The air bubble generator is working fine. You're going to be fine. Just stay there. I'm authorizing emergency cookie distribution. One per operative. I'm talking to you, Johnson!" She yelled to an off-screen operative.

"Yeah. Yeah." Came the distant reply

"Okay. Keep everyone together, and stay in contact." The girl nodded and moved to shut off her screen. "Oh!" Rachel grabbed her attention again. "And yes, shooting it counts as touching it."

The girl turned to her right. "She says it counts!"

Rachel was able to catch a disappointed "Aw man" before the screen went black.

A smile formed on Rachel's face. She sighed, readying herself to repeat this process another dozen times. "Mute all but screen two."

–|–|–|–|–|–|–|–|–|–|–

The small team of soldiers had trekked through most of the main base. On their stop by the now empty botanical area, they had reported in with Rachel, who sent them to check on the power station. Partly because it was the only station that hadn't reported to the bridge, but mainly because it was the last known location of the only remaining scientist on the base: Numbuh 74.239. Most of the engineers had been in the hangar, prepping the escape vehicles, but a few stayed in their sector in order to fix any of the inevitable systems failures that would come up after the base got hit. Rachel's theory was that they were too busy fixing other failures to fix their own. Fanny's was a bit more grim.

"Okay. Listen up! Right now, engineering's status is unknown. They could be hurt. Get med kits ready. Whatever those blobs are, they were obviously meant to do something."

"So why haven't they done anything?"

"Maybe they're waiting. Maybe they have and we just can't tell. We don't know. But for now, assume they are weapons. There will probably be one in there. I know our leader told us not to touch it, but if it even twitches, I want you to hit it with EVERYTHING!" Though her friend would prefer to think otherwise, Fanny knew that the most probable explanation for the radio silence was an attack. She didn't know why the enemy would attack engineering only, but she figured it was because it was the only station that wasn't abandoned or guarded. That, and knocking out the base's power would put the KND at an enormous disadvantage.

The entrance to the engineering sector stood before her. Lights still shone brightly, so if the enemy's plan was blacking out the base, they hadn't done it. At least, not yet. Fanny drew her spicer, aiming it directly at the door. "Open it." One of the soldiers hit a button and the door split in two, each half retracting into its respective side. Light seeped in from the corridor and a breach in the ceiling, but aside from the outside light sources, the room was mostly dark, short of an unhelpfully dim, pulsating green glow. The seeping light lit up parts of the ground, revealing root like objects that covered the entire floor and most of the walls and ceiling. As Fanny observed them, she discovered them to be the source of the green glow. It didn't take a science team to figure out where the roots spread from.

Fanny kept her weapon drawn. None of the other stations were like this. A single word popped into her head: Infected. Whatever that blob was, it had spread its roots, infecting the entire room. "Stay behind me. Weapons out." A couple soldiers activated flashlights on their helmets, which helped light up the massive station as they moved through it, never making any sound louder than breathing. When they got to the center, Fanny broke the silence. "Hello? Anybody here?" She inquired to the darkness. The darkness soon answered back.

Everybody jumped at the loud, blunt banging. They traced it to a blast door on the far end of the sector. The door was sealed shut and completely covered in roots. They heard the muffled yells of the engineering team through it. "Hey! Please help us! Please just let us out!"

"How?" Fanny yelled back.

"Pry it open! From the bottom!" One soldier handed Fanny a crowbar, and she jammed it underneath the door. Before she could start, one of the soldiers stopped her.

"Wait. What if it's the bad guys?" She asked fearfully.

"They're aliens, stupid. They wouldn't be able to talk to us." Another one replied.

"They could know English."

While Fanny didn't believe the girl, she decided to humor her. "Operative! What's your numbuh?"

"What? Um, 14.7." Fanny knew the designation 14.7 belonged to one of the engineers. A pneumatics expert. "See, not aliens."

"I'll believe it when I see it." The girl muttered.

Fanny resumed pushing the crowbar until the other soldiers could fit their fingers under to help lift it. Eventually, the door was opened and the roots that had rested on it flopped to the floor. As light leaked past the doorway, Fanny found six operatives cowering inside the reactor room, all engineers, and discovered that the room was untouched by the infection that had spread throughout the rest of the sector. "What happened?"

"We got stuck in. Once we were attacked, we hid in here. Blast doors were set to close and stay closed. Designed to keep in an explosion should the robo-hamster power coil ever overload. They weren't configured to open from in here. Never thought we'd need to."

"Okay. Are your comms still up?"

"Uh-huh." Came the meek reply from a still cowering engineer in the back of the newly opened room. "We just couldn't get to them."

"Right. You." Fanny ordered, pointing at one of her soldiers. "Check in with Numbuh 362. Tell her we got the engineers and are heading back."

Numbuh 14.7 emerged from the power room. "I'm just glad they sent soldiers. Without any real weapons, we couldn't fight off those little things. I guess they're weak to chilies." He said, noticing 86's sidearm.

"Little things?"

"Yeah. The little blobs." Fanny drew her spicer, giving 14.7 a clear understanding of what had actually happened, or rather, what hadn't. "Oh no."

"KIDS NEXT DOOR! Weapons ready! We're going to have company."

–|–|–|–|–|–|–|–|–|–|–

With the stations running fairly well on their own, and 74.239 still being out of contact, or perhaps just not bothering with it, Rachel, for once, had nothing to do. So she stood leaning against the communications desk, staring at the large object that had crashed through one of the many windows on the bridge. She then turned her gaze to the large hole it had left in said window. "Think we should be worried about that?" She asked, out of boredom more than anything else.

The comms officer assumed he was the target of the question. "No. Not yet. The air bubble keeps us breathing. As long as that's still working, we'll be all right."

"But what if it stops working?"

"If it stops working and we lose pressure, we're going to have a lot more smashed windows."

"Hm... Has 86 called in yet?"

"Not yet, ma'am."

"She's one of my best. I'm sure she's fine."