Chapter 3: Stasis
Nothing happened. Instead of the loud bang signaling that the grenade had gone off I was hoping for, only silence greeted my ears.
"Ok, what just happened?" I whispered into my comlink.
"I don't think you inputted the access code into that grenade." Alastair chimed in over the com.
"And exactly why didn't you tell me that I needed a damned access code to operate that thing?"
"I dunno, I just thought you could read the instruction manual." Before I could scream in frustration at our controller, Malaya brought me back to the situation at hand.
"Sam, switch over to infrared."
"Why?"
"Just do it." My screen flicked to black, then over to my grainy infrared scopes. In my peripheral vision, I could see the faint heat signatures of the lights as tiny dots, like stars in a polluted sky. But in front of me, there was nothing. No heat signatures denoting bodies. In other words, I had literally almost blown up a room for nothing.
"Well, that would've ended badly." Malaya chuckled into her mic.
"I guess so. Al, are there any passageways beyond what we're looking at?"
"Not on the official schematics. Just go in there. I think it's safe."
I got up, re-brandished my Astro Automatic, and slowly entered the room. Malaya, slightly in front of me, stopped suddenly. I peeked my head over to the left of her form, and, came to a sickening realization as to why she had halted.
"Sam, they're-"
"-Yeah. I can see that." On the floor lay four bodies, two in trenchcoats and the other two in hoverbiker outfits. In the low light, the bejeweled Death Adder's eyes glared up, threatening to petrify us in place.
"Al."
"Already on it." Through my comlink, I could hear a series of clicks and movements, Alastair working at the holographic interface. "Sam, move two feet forward. I can't get a good view of the neck area."
"Roger." I stepped forward. There wasn't any sign of external injury on the Death Adder that I was approaching, it was as if his heart had simply stopped beating. The EMP grenade I had so foolishly rolled into the room was resting next to one of the deceased's arms, and I scooped it up in my left hand and turned over to my right, looking at another of the corpses. "Malaya, grab their weapons while Al finishes his scan." No answer. "Malaya?" I looked up. Malaya stood there, frozen. Through her visor I could see that she was staring at something in the adjacent room. "Talk to me. What's going on?"
"Sam, there's something in that room."
"What do you mean? I'm not picking up anything on my infrareds."
"I know. I don't think it has a heat signature." I had never seen her so afraid before. Her body was arrested, stick-straight, and her hands were already at her holsters. "Sam, I think I know what killed these guys."
"Al, check for electromagnetic signatures emanating from an ionic core in the building."
"But I'm in the middle of my scan-"
"Damn it Al! Do it now!"
"Roger. Scanning now." I turned back over to Malaya.
"Malaya, start walking back slowly. Get behind that desk over there." She nodded, and, careful not to trip over one of the corpses, made her way step-by step past me over to the table. I began to move towards her, keeping my eye on the open door leading to whatever was lurking in there. "Al, I need that scan done now."
"I'm trying! The computer's got a lot of interference to sift through. Just stay-" He never got to finish his sentence. A large, hunched metallic form burst through the doorway, guns blazing at both Malaya and I. With bolts flying all around my body, I dove for the nearest table, evading the shots by inches. Malaya poured suppressing fire from both of her Autos into the beast's belly, while I twisted the EMP grenade around, desperately trying to find its access point.
"Al! Access codes!"
"But I'm doing the other scan-"
"-I don't give a rat's ass about your scan corporal! Just give me the codes!"
"20492, enter it in the southern hemisphere of the device."
"Roger." I typed the code into the grenade and looked over at Malaya. Red bolts flew around the cramped room, spraying the tables with charred holes. She pumped three shots into the aggressor before ducking once again.
"Hurry up Sam. This guy means business."
"Got it. Take cover." I hurled the grenade over at the automated battle system and ducked. A split-second later a blue light filled the room, then nothing. It appeared as if it had done its job. I signed to Malaya "I'm going to peek over" and slowly raised my head over the table. The robot, around 6 and a half feet tall, was shut down. No light emanated from its eye-holes, and the energy belts linking its pulse cannons with the main reactor were dead.
The room was filled with marks from the pulse cannons that had charred virtually everything burnable, with the slight exception of Malaya and I, in the room. The four bodies were virtually gone now, as they had been struck a multitude of times during the crossfire. "Al, what are the results of your first scan?"
"Well, they're partial at best, but it looks like our four friends here were killed by an intense radiation blast, originating from a point shared by that ABS over there. But it seems to have passed, so your suits should protect you from its residual effects."
"And the ionic energy sources?"
"More than just this guy here. In fact, I'm reading a large cluster of them a little ways past that door your friend burst through."
"More ABS's?"
"Not that I can tell. Different energy signatures."
"Sam?"
"Yeah Malaya?"
"Could you come over here for a minute?" I walked over to the dead robot, its hunched metallic form giving it the appearance of an automated weight lifter. Its armor, dinged in several places by Malaya's Autos, was grayish in color, a similar shade to our uniforms. In the darkness, our light-panes illuminated the faint markings of a familiar logo.
"Al, why the hell would an EDF bot be down here?" Malaya was still looking at the bot's diminutive head, shielded by a carbon-fiber helmet extending down to its shoulders.
"Point protection of a facility I would imagine."
"A zoo?" Malaya asked.
"Well, I did a bit of digging while you were fighting that thing and pulled up a schematic of the original layout of Sub-Kyoto. Take a look in the Southwestern quadrant." On my HUD, another map was placed on top of the one currently on my screen. With our positions marked, I saw a building right on top of us that was most definitely not a zoo. "See what I'm talking about?"
"Indeed. Seems like the zoo was a cover for something else." Malaya agreed.
"So that's why they built it. No one ever went here anyways." I chimed in. Behind the ABS, the door was opened onto a metallic platform. I sidestepped around the behemoth, being careful not to reactivate it, as Malaya followed closely behind. Two steps later, and I was staring at one of the most bizarre sights I had ever laid my eyes upon.
"Al, what the hell am I looking at right now?"
"Well, from outwards appearances it looks like around 200 or so stasis tubes, each filled with the body of a teenager. No life signs that I can tell. I think they're all dead, Sam." I looked over at Malaya. She was stock still, silent. I wanted to reach out, help her cope with what she was seeing, but I couldn't. I was preoccupied by the sheer immensity of the complex here. All of them that I could see were in their 20's, and were each in their own tube, frozen between life and death. "Sam, Can you do a facial recognition scan on these chaps and upload it to my server? I'd like to cross check these with police reports."
"Sure thing. Malaya, can you do the same?"
"What? Oh, yeah. Sorry." Something was bothering her, I could tell. If the way that she, almost robotically walked down the stairs and to the nearest tube didn't confirm it, the way she was acting did. I had never seen her so, well, frightened in all my days working with her. It was as if she had seen a ghost. I looked at the first man's face in the stasis tube. He was around 25, blonde, and around 6 feet tall. I finished uploading the image of his face
"Got a match Sam."
"Who is he?" I asked.
"Darren Wilson. 24, reported dead on June 23rd, 2199. Cause of death, radiation-induced colon cancer."
"Does it say who reported him as dead?"
"Yeah, the local police. A patrol found his body and, according to the report, they cremated him since he had no family."
"Which obviously didn't happen." A loud bell went off over the comlink.
"Another match. Thanks Malaya."
"Just doing my job Al. Who is this one?"
"Orville Johnson. 23, died of radiation-induced stomach cancer on April 11th, 2199."
"Let me guess, no family, so they 'cremated' his body as well?"
"Bingo, sister."
"Alright Al. Malaya, let's get to work." For the next half hour, we took down names, did facial scans, and cross-checked identities through city records. All of the men and women in stasis in this facility had been marked as dead by municipal authorities, and supposedly cremated. I began to formulate an idea of what this facility was. At the end of our search, Malaya and I met up and discussed what we had found.
"What do you think this means? With the EDF logo emblazoned on the ABS outside, and all of the inconsistencies in what happened to these people, do you suppose we've uncovered something in our own organization?" I asked her.
"Well, that's the other thing. The briefcase that one guy was carrying was missing from where we found their bodies. I think that that 'drop' might have been a setup."
"Which means that the perpetrator might not be far away."
"Yeah, that's what I'm thinking too. Al, run a scan through the entire city, looking for any movement. We're getting out of here."
"Roger that chief. Scanning now." Malaya turned back to me after looking at all the stasis tubes, lined up neatly on the concrete floor of the facility.
"Sam, there's another issue I have with the reports."
"And that is?"
"All of the people suspended in stasis here are in perfect health. There are no signs of cancer or any of the other diseases that they supposedly died from."
"Oh boy. Then you think-"
"-Yeah. I think those death reports were just cover ups, and we've found something that the government wants to keep the public from knowing."