Eagles Over Earth
Chapter 15: Forgotten
May 10, 2020
Oklahoma City, Central U.S. Quarantine Zone
Michael McNeil had dreamed many nightmares, but the oldest one he could remember occurred when he was only eight years old.
He was falling, already a bad sign for the ground-favoring McNeil, and landed in a field full of glittering green crystals. Before he could react, the crystals began to envelop him like a second skin. He tried to move away, but every step felt like walking on broken glass. When he paused to look down, two faces looked back upon him, two faces he didn't really recognize but knew were his birth parents, not Franklin and Tanya McNeil. Their faces blinked once, then screamed.
McNeil had woken up screaming too, soaked in cold sweat and warm piss. He was only remembering this now, because as he carefully picked his way through a long-abandoned neighborhood, he once again felt the ghostly sensation of stepping on glass, even though he was armored in supermaterial carapace armor and full toxic environmental gear.
"What are you thinking about, McNeil?" Nishimura asked from his right, clad in identical protection.
"A nightmare," he admitted but didn't elaborate further.
"Sorry to hear that, mate," Lee said. Despite the injuries he had sustained in the battle at Hyderabad, the former SAS trooper insisted on coming today. Sidorov, however, needed a longer recovery period. "The Tiberium, eh?"
"Yeah."
"Squad leader is having nightmares?" Korba remarked. "Uh oh."
"Okay, tough guy, who isn't?" McNeil snapped back. "Look at this place."
Like the abduction site in Cairo two months ago, Tiberium contamination was rampant in what remained of Oklahoma City. Most of the buildings were stripped down to their scaffolding. Glittering green Tiberium crystals emerged from practically every corner, as bent blossom trees emitted toxic puffs at random intervals. His squad had gone in after XCOM satellites picked up a suspected alien abduction here, in the middle of the American Quarantine Zone, but McNeil had serious doubts whether there was anything worth protecting. He'd voiced as much to the Commander, but couldn't change his leader's mind.
"I am too, if that makes you feel any better," Glenn admitted, her sealed helmet covering up her youthful features but not voice.
"It doesn't," McNeil said.
"Oh. Sorry."
Nishimura took a knee, nervously thumbing the trigger of her laser prism shotgun, devastating close-range weapons derived from the laser rifles already standard-issue among XCOM. "Saint Petersburg was bad, but at least there wasn't Tiberium," she opined. "I think I'd rather be there than here. Spider aliens and all."
Before he could reply, McNeil caught sight of a fleshy, human-sized… thing moving in the distance, but it disappeared out of sight as soon as he trained his rifle on it.
"What the fuck was that?" Shivani Metra said, raising her SMG into position. The Indian-born rocketeer of Paragon Squad, Metra brought along the heavy firepower today. Unlike Parnell, she had ditched the light machine gun in favor of more rockets. Much like Parnell, she had an ample supply of crude language. "Did you see something?"
"Visceroid, I think," McNeil identified, the mutant creatures an increasingly common sight as Tiberium grew unchecked across the world. "It's gone now."
"Then where are the aliens?"
McNeil shook his head. It was still possible they'd been deployed on a false alarm, as he had hoped back during his first mission in Kansas. "Anyone who knows that becomes the next squad leader."
"Okay, I'll keep my eyes peeled," Korba affirmed.
Cutting through a backyard that was relatively clear of Tiberium, the squad finally encountered their first contact: a man running straight for them.
"Freeze, damnit!" Lee shouted, but the man kept running, more afraid of whatever was behind him than the six guns in front. McNeil repeated Lee's order but hesitated firing – this guy obviously wasn't a Chryssalid-infected zombie or a Thin Man – but then he saw a glint of unearthly green on the man's face.
At that, all of McNeil's hesitation vanished. While Tiberium typically killed victims on contact or after inhalation, there were rumors that a few exposure victims developed mutations and crystal growths on their bodies. McNeil had only half-believed it, but this man was undoubtedly one of them – and thus a threat to the whole team.
"Stay the hell back!" McNeil shouted, firing a single warning shot, perilously close to the side of the mutant's head. He finally came to a halt, dropping to his knees and throwing his hands into the air.
"On your knees!" Korba shouted, bossing his way forward and fixing his shotgun on him. He complied. "Down, on the ground! Hands on your head!"
The man obeyed again, but he was shaking with fear.
"Please, you have to help us!" he cried out. Korba shook his head and pressed closer, making sure his shotgun's barrel was leveled at the man's head, and he finally shut up.
That gave McNeil time to cut straight to the point. "Did you see any strange creatures or aliens around here? Grays, greens, anything humanoid like that?"
"I did! Yes, I did!" The man – or mutant, McNeil wasn't sure what to even call him – became even more agitated. "They're taking us. They're taking us all."
"Us," McNeil interjected. "You mean mutants?"
"Yes. They're targeting us. Not like everywhere else, they want us all. They're taking whole towns at once, not like the blunts. Mine… mine was hit today."
"What the hell is a blunt?" Metra said, completely confused. "Is this some drug joke I don't know?"
"Normal people, it sounds like," Korba said. "Not the worst thing I've been called."
"Where were they taken?" McNeil continued the main conversation. "Did you see where the aliens or their victims went?"
"That building. There." The man pointed a shaky hand towards one of the most decrepit structures in the whole town, a large two-story office building a long hike away.
"So that's our target," Lee concluded.
"It is," McNeil agreed, but someone cleared her throat before he could take a step forward.
"What about him?" Glenn said, thumbing at the mutant, still shivering on his knees.
"He's no threat to us anymore," McNeil said. "Leave him be."
"Right… Uh, hey! What's your name?" she called.
"Perry," he said. "My name's Perry."
"Okay Perry, you just hang tight. We'll clear these aliens out in no time."
"Come on." McNeil told his team as they filed into formation on the Commander's orders. Korba and Nishimura, the shotgun-toting two, led the way. McNeil, Glenn, and Lee formed a second line with their laser rifles, while Metra brought up the back with her rocket launcher.
As they made their approach, Nishimura suddenly signaled for them to halt.
"Contact ahead. Armed humans," she warned.
"Armed humans?" McNeil reached for his disc grenade. "Nod?"
"No, more mutants, looks like. Four in total."
"All right. Let's find what the hell they're here for."
McNeil rose out to introduce himself, but a little painful pang went through as he did. The squad he commanded today didn't include any of the people with him when he introduced himself to Nod back in Cairo. Navarro, for instance, would surely have something to say about him repeating this trick. Something about self-preservation or lack thereof…
"Hey! GDI forces here!" he shouted. "I'm coming out!"
To zero surprise, the four mutants, armed with what appeared to be surplus GDI gear, all turned their guns on him.
"GDI?" one of the mutants said, incredulous.
"Yeah, Special Forces!" McNeil replied, hoping that his old cover story worked. "We're here to help."
"No you're not," the largest mutant replied, aiming his gun more carefully. It looked like a rusted Cobretti, barely fit for a conscript – not that McNeil felt like testing his body armor against it. "What the hell are you really doing here?"
"I could ask you the same thing."
"We're trying to save our people. You clearly aren't."
"We're just trying to help," Glenn said from behind. McNeil whipped around to see the young soldier walk up with a measured, confident step. "One of your guys, Perry, asked us to help," she said. At the mention of the name, the mutants' faces softened. "So we will. Can you tell us what happened?"
"Well, I'd be dumb to say no to extra guns." The lead mutant nodded, exhaling and taking his ballistic goggles off, which revealed glowing green eyes. "Okay. Look. We tracked down those creatures after they hit our town and took half the people with them. From the way they're holding out there, I'm guessing they're waiting for exfil. I'd rather not wait to see what kind of bird they got."
"What's the level of resistance?" McNeil asked, curious at the military-like language of the lead mutant.
"Tough. Mix of jetpack cyborgs and the big apes. Dunno how else to describe them, but they already killed the first squad I sent in."
Presumably Floaters and Mutons, as they'd named the gorilla-like alien encountered in Hong Kong during Zhang's extraction. McNeil agreed with the assessment that this would be "tough".
"Then let us handle it," Glenn said. "Look at our equipment and compare it to yours. Who do you think has a better shot?"
The mutant paused. "Wait. Before you go, remember, they took our people alive. Be careful in there, you hear me? And if you see our people inside, tell them we're waiting for them, will you?"
"We will sir," Glenn promised.
The mutants pulled back, and McNeil's squad prepared to storm the building. Before they began, McNeil and Korba inched forward to get a good look at the structure.
"Cubicles on the right, big lobby area on the left," McNeil reported.
"Empty fountain in the center, some garden displays too," Korba followed up. "Or at least, what's left of it. I think there's Tib in the fountain."
"Avoid the fountain, then," McNeil concluded.
"What's the plan, sir?" Lee asked the Commander.
"Korba, McNeil, Nishimura, take the lobby," he ordered. "Glenn, Lee, go left to the cars, cover the lobby team. Metra, ready a rocket."
A few seconds passed as the squad prepared for action. McNeil motioned a countdown with his fingers: three, two, one…
"GO!" McNeil snapped, charging ahead first as Korba and Nishimura fanned out from behind him, bringing up their shotguns to hip-fire just in case. Their prudence was rewarded when one of the ape-like Mutons emerged from behind a door – except it wasn't alone. McNeil instinctively leaped for the ground, going prone behind a garden piece, as the night was suddenly lit up by plasma fire.
"There's three! Three Mutons!" Nishimura warned. "They're in the office!"
Glenn and Lee began trading lasers back, turning the area into a Christmas display of lethal green and red.
Korba's shotgun hissed fire. "Make that two!" he growled, racking his shotgun with only one hand as an alien died.
"McNeil, move up," the Commander cooly ordered.
"Yes sir!" he confirmed, rising to his feet. A wave of plasma bolts washed to his side, his fingers tingling from the emitted heat. He managed to reach the front entrance to unbuckle a grenade when a deeply unpleasant sound reached his ears – Floater screams.
"Coming from the right!" Nishimura screamed. "We're being flanked!"
A thundering explosion turned the battlefield golden for an instant, washing out all the lasers and plasma so far.
"Multiple targets down!" Metra called out, but as the explosion dissipated, McNeil heard one survivor scream and a stream of plasma zip by his field of view, less than half a meter away from Glenn, who understandably flinched. McNeil didn't miss the return fire, and blew the Floater's head off.
The two remaining Mutons seemed surprised by the sudden obliteration of their backup, their fire slowing for just a moment. With a battle cry, McNeil took advantage of the delay to toss his grenade into the doorway, blowing away their cover and setting up Korba and Nishimura for kill shots.
Both of them missed, and instead, the Mutons bounded away and ducked behind the building.
"What the fuck was that, you guys?" McNeil snapped, ignoring an intrusive thought that he shoot the two while he still could.
"I almost got my head shot off!" Nishimura complained. "Sorry, okay?"
"I ain't perfect, squad leader," Korba nonchalantly said.
"Strike One, form up. Clear out the lobby," the Commander ordered.
With a moment to catch their breaths and reload, the squad entered the building's lobby, but aside from the first Muton Korba killed, didn't see anything else. But they heard a series of Muton roars close by that McNeil implicitly understood as a challenge.
"They're waiting for us," Lee said. "Shall we oblige?"
"I can lead," Korba said.
"Making amends, are you?" McNeil muttered.
"No, just putting the best soldier first." McNeil began to reply, but Korba cut him off. "Squad leader, someone's got to bust your ego. Might as well be me."
"Is that your excuse to be a dickhead?"
"It's a good excuse, isn't it?"
McNeil groaned and motioned for Korba to lead. With a wordless nod, he charged out – and two streams of plasma immediately greeted him.
"Woah!" he screamed, but that wasn't a pained scream.
McNeil followed Korba right after the plasma passed, coming out to see the two Mutons both behind a yellow sedan. One of them was already falling limp, its chest shattered by a laser prism blast, but the other had lowered its rifle and was angling to throw an ovoid object.
"Grenade!" Lee, who was coming out next, warned.
McNeil dove behind a white sedan, expecting the worst, but only felt a flash of heat, rather than the sting of any shrapnel: the alien grenade was purely explosive. He looked ahead to see that the asphalt had been liquified around the blast area, splattering a dark, smoking sludge around the lip of the crater.
So if I had been standing there, that sludge… McNeil threw the thought away to pin down the last Muton with furious bursts of laser fire. The Muton was content to hold position and fire back, its plasma shots far more intimidating in comparison. But it was a six to one fight, and there was only one way it could end.
Nisihimura blasted it with a grenade, and while it was far less powerful than whatever warhead was contained in the Mutons' equivalent, it was enough to disorient the alien long enough for Glenn to drill it twice.
"Outside clear!" she shouted.
"Strike One, back inside!" the Commander ordered. "There are additional alien contacts inbound, moving towards the office. Glenn, Nishimura, McNeil, stay outside and cover. Korba, Lee, Metra, move in."
The trio moved inside as McNeil carefully kept his fireteam on the building's rotten edge. If the inside group had contact, the outside team could quickly flank them.
"Contact!" Korba shouted not a minute later.
"Three hostiles, pushing forwards!" Metra added.
"Move!" McNeil snapped, sprinting at top speed around the building's edge as the inside sang with laser and rocket fire.
His fireteam turned the edge right as a ball of plasma blasted clean through the desk Lee was behind and hit him full-force. Glenn gasped and froze in shock, dropping her weapon as her squadmate fell. Somehow, McNeil swore he heard the rifle hit the ground even amidst the general screaming and gunfire of the shootout.
The Muton that had landed the hit roared in triumph and immediately lobbed a grenade at Korba's position, but before the aliens could further follow up, Nishimura and McNeil mowed down the Muton with a hail of accurate laser shots. Korba forward-rolled out of the grenade's blast zone as the two Floaters turned to run – only one escaped the confines of the building, the other taking three consecutive hits from McNeil's rifle that tore gaping holes in its jetpack and caused the entire creature to burst in flames. He kept an eye trained for the last Floater, retreated to parts unknown, as Nishimura dashed to Lee.
"What's his status?" McNeil asked.
"He's stable!" Nishimura confirmed. "His armor absorbed most of the hit!"
Glenn and Nishimura rejoined them as Metra stayed close to Lee, who was dazed with pain but breathing – his carapace armor chestplate had all but disintegrated. Still, with a spare medkit, he would be back in action in minutes. More concerning than one man going down was Glenn's reaction, though.
"Glenn," McNeil said. "What happened a minute ago?"
She looked at her boots. "I… thought he was dead. Just like that," she said. "Oh my God, I was so scared. I'm sorry."
"Don't be," Nishimura said. "We've all had to face that fear before."
"Lee's alive. That's what matters most," McNeil assured her.
"Guys, nice pep talk and all, but there's still an alien on the loose," Korba said.
"Where is it?" Glenn asked, straightening up.
A boost of rocket motors was their only warning as the Floater landed less than three meters away from Nishimura. She instantly fired her shotgun, grazing it, and as the Floater flinched in pain, Nishimura drew the arc thrower from her belt and fired it. The move was incredibly fast, no doubt a rehearsed drill, and the alien landed flat on its face, its body shuddering.
"Fantastic work, Nishimura!" the Commander congratulated.
"Sir." She took a long, relieved breath. "I'm just glad it worked."
"Me too," McNeil said, keeping a close eye on the disabled Floater. He never had the opportunity to see them up close clearly, and was immediately repulsed. They were even uglier than he'd thought, with a repugnant amount of cybernetics masking their organic body. At least Kwan maintained the human form – Parnell seemed to appreciate that – but McNeil now could tell these Floaters had been a different creature, once. At least until somebody had ripped off the bottom half of their bodies in favor of jetpacks. Judging from their behavior, it hadn't been the Floaters themselves.
"Who even made these things?" Metra asked the question on McNeil's mind.
"Someone I'll have to kill," Korba said.
Aside from that, nobody had a good answer. McNeil's team swept the remainder of the building, but found nothing else. The Commander ordered them into the basement next, which they accessed through a staircase thankfully free of Tiberium. Not that McNeil wanted to take any chances testing the weight – they went down one by one. Glenn, being the lightest, went first, then Korba, and finally McNeil; the other three stayed out.
The trio had flashlights built into their helmets, which laid bare the grim scene within: dozens of people piled inside, most of them completely wrapped in the green filaments, save for a few whose heads were still poking through. With such a horrible environment, McNeil felt all of his danger-sensing instincts scream at full blast.
"Stay alert, people," McNeil murmured, carefully looking around. "Just because the lights are out doesn't mean nobody's home…"
He felt a rush of movement, and McNeil reacted just in time to prevent a knife from sliding into his neck, though he was forced to drop his rifle in the second-long scuffle against a woman who had sprung from nowhere – she had somehow hidden herself amongst the captives. The two locked in a grapple, with her knife still perilously close to McNeil's vitals but frozen in place.
"Bitch, stand down!" Korba shouted, his weapon up and ready to fire.
"My name's Umagon, and you better use it," said the woman, who was far stronger than her size suggested. She pushed against McNeil again, and it took all of his strength to hold his ground. "Unless you want his head cut off!"
Korba frowned and tilted his head, though his finger remained on the trigger of his shotgun. "Tempting, but no."
"We're not here to hurt you, Umagon," Glenn said. "We're GDI and we just cleared out the aliens here."
Umagon relaxed a notch, and McNeil immediately shoved the woman away, keeping his eyes on her. She was wearing a hodgepodge of black body armor and a veil that obscured much of her face, save for mysterious eyes with a single gleaming green shard near her eyebrow.
"You're a mutant," McNeil realized. "Why are you here?"
"I was part of the first squad sent in. They were wiped out except for me. I stayed here, with the captives. Most of them are still alive."
"Can you free them?" McNeil said.
"I can try."
She walked over to a foot-long Tiberium crystal bursting from the wall, and with her bare hands, ripped it out and cut it against the webbing filaments. To McNeil's amazement, they began to loosen. Suddenly, he remembered what he saw in the Cairo abduction: the two different alien substances repelled each other.
"Oh…" he said, now very curious. Might the aliens know something about Tiberium than humanity didn't? "Did you know that would work?"
"No," Umagon said. "But the rest of my weapons weren't working. Will you help me?"
"Aha, fuck no!" Korba exclaimed. "I'm not touching any of that."
"We'll tell your people you're alive and here," McNeil said. "Is that okay?"
"That is perfectly okay. Hurry up then."
It took zero convincing to extricate the whole squad from the condemned office. Moments after they left, McNeil saw the original four mutants walk up to them.
"You succeeded," their leader said, as a statement of fact.
"We did," McNeil said just as dryly. "There's a survivor inside too, said her name is Umagon. She's freeing your people now."
"Umagon is still alive?" one of the mutants whispered, astonished.
"Just as Tratos predicted," another said. Their leader looked at them both, and despite his glowing green eyes, the expression was an unmistakable shut up.
"Thank you, GDI," the leader said. "We'll take it from here."
"Please do." McNeil and his squad stepped aside, their weapons relaxed. As the other three mutants swiftly moved in, the leader stuck around a little longer.
"You said you were Special Forces, right?"
"Yeah, what about it?" McNeil said.
"Thanks for saving us again."
"What do you mean, again?"
The leader sighed. "A long time ago, before I became… this, I wore your eagle. A rifleman with the 56th Infantry. SF guys saved my ass back then. The guns and armor were different, sure, but I know SF when I see them. So thanks again."
McNeil mumbled something between you're welcome and yes sir before leading his squad back to the Skyranger.
"So, mutants?" Parnell asked around the rec room table that evening. Poker was already concluded, but with the snack bowl still half-full, most of the players had opted to stay around and finish it over some light conversation. McNeil had kept quiet, his thoughts alternating between the mission today and his early, embarrassing loss in poker. And, most troubling, the one mutant who'd remarked "just as Tratos predicted". What did it all mean?
"Hope I never see them again," Korba said. "They were freaky."
"No shit. Living people covered in Tib when it should be killing them?"
"That one chick picked up a crystal with her bare hands," Korba noted. "I saw it."
"Her bare hands?" Parnell arched an eyebrow. "Damn. I don't know if I believe it."
"You should," Metra said. Flush with victory in XCOM and poker alike, she was in a talkative mood this evening. "It's a good thing they didn't try to fuck with us, though. You should have seen me dropping rockets on those aliens like they're going out of style. Boom, boom, pow!" She made an exploding motion with her hands.
"That doesn't ever get old," Parnell agreed. "Zhang can teach you a few tricks, too."
"Uh, no. Absolutely not."
"What's wrong with Zhang?" Parnell asked, keeping a casual veneer.
"What isn't? He's a career criminal. If there's anything wrong with XCOM, it's that they left someone like him in. I trust all you here, but not criminals like him."
The insult hung around the room for nearly the most awkward five seconds of McNeil's time in XCOM, until Korba loudly burped.
"Excuse me," Korba said, not looking the least bit ashamed. "It was the soda."
"Fuckin' pig," Parnell grumbled. "Remind me to only serve you water."
"What is he, some little kid?" McNeil quipped. Quite a few soldiers nodded their heads. Korba vigorously shook his in refusal. "Speaking of kids, what's with Glenn?"
"The redhead baby?" Kwan asked, bringing a metallic, cheese-stained hand to her chin. "Last night, she walked in when I was cleaning my arms and asked if she could try one on. She didn't realize they came off fully. I couldn't believe it. Neither did she, for that matter."
McNeil and a few others chuckled. The 'baby' – it turned out Glenn was just nineteen years old, having enlisted at seventeen – was often the talk of base with her exploratory antics. To hear Kwan fed up was new, though.
"She's just… Glenn," Metra supplied. "It took us a little while to get used to her, too. That's just part of her personality: she wants to know more, all the time. You'll find she's got a lot of energy and a huge heart for people. She can get along with anyone – Lee and I think she'll become a general one day."
Parnell and McNeil matched curious eyes with each other. Judging from his reaction, he had never considered Glenn as future brass. Neither had McNeil.
"Well, if you really think so, someone should keep an eye on her," McNeil suggested. "Don't make me, though. I got enough on my plate."
"Don't we all?" Parnell shrugged. "Unless somebody wants to volunteer…"
"My squad can," Metra said. "But you mark my words, she's got potential here."
"We all do," McNeil said, gunning for the most leader-like thing to say.
"Shall we toast to that?" Parnell offered, raising his cup of water.
McNeil raised his cup too. "To our potential."
Author's Note: Here's the first, but not the last, appearance of the Forgotten. Enemy Unknown players also might be able to guess which map I based this chapter's main battlefield on, albeit re-imagined in the Tiberium-torn universe. As always, stay tuned!