Frozen Fire
Chapter Four: Horde of Teeth
xXx
The hazy green sun was high in the sky, listless smog-like clouds churning lazily in a slight wind. A cloak of eerie quiet enveloped the area, even as booted feet crept across the sparsely graveled path. A barbed fence emerged from the haze, and then the silence was fragmented by the low whines of ectoguns as they blared to life, fingers disengaging safety locks with light touches upon the triggers. Heart beats fluttered, breaths quickening as adrenaline surged like lightning.
One, Two. Three, Four. One, Two. Three, Four, Sam's mantra was in her head, a calming presence that did little to keep her apprehension at bay.
Dale Barbarra was leading their troop with silent steps, his gun lowered in front of him and ready to fire. Sam walked in the group's center, with Dash at her left shoulder and Kwan at her right. Willie Shoemaker and Dick Belair flanked their group, their eyes keen and ears pricked.
"How we lookin', Foley?" Barbarra asked the comm.
"Clear as can be," Tucker responded. "Nothing in the city, and only a couple of wisps showing in the wastelands."
Sam could almost feel the relief in her companions. She checked the small scanner on her forearm, as if expecting to see something to the contrary, unable to shake the unease crawling about in her stomach. Nothing. It was clear, just as Tucker had said.
"Man," Dash drawled to Sam, "I can almost feel the hot shower I'm gonna take once you guys get the fusion power going."
Kwan nudged her with his shoulder. "Yeah, Sam. It's so cool what you guys do. Do you really think you'll be able to fix it?"
Sam was careful to keep her expression blank as she walked. She'd reviewed the schematics of the ectoreactor's fusion core before leaving for breakfast this morning, and as far as she could tell, it didn't look terribly complicated. A simple replacement of a few parts and they'd be good to go. "I don't see why not," she told them honestly. "Although, I wouldn't be surprised if the other sweepers already have it up and running before we get there. We have some drones to service first."
"What I don't get," Shoemaker growled from behind them. "Is what took you lot so damn long. If it's really that simple, why have I been freezin' my ass off in the showers for four years?"
"Well, we've been working on them," Sam said, shooting the old bastard a dirty look over her shoulder. "They needed a lot of work after Amity fell."
"Is it really true that we might be able to raise the shields soon?" Kwan asked her.
"I hope so." Her voice was quiet, her eyes falling to the weapon in her hands, unable to bear the hope and awe she saw as it bloomed in Kwan's expression.
The wall of barbed fencing came to an end and their path became lined with old and battered cars, stacked into teetering piles that loomed around them like small, misshapen mountains. Sam tried not to look at them as she passed, tried not to remember the day she'd shielded herself behind them. She could still feel the way the ground had quaked as blast after blast of ectoplasmic energy exploded around her. Even now, the shards of glass that had blown from their windows still gleamed like treasure beneath her boots.
They walked the deserted streets without incident, though Sam made sure to keep at least one eye on her scanner. She kept her senses honed, quietly, poised on her toes like a cat, ready to launch into action should she need to. She couldn't shake her unease, as if some inner voice was warning her, over and over, and yet . . . There was nothing. Nothing on her scanner, nothing that she could see or feel, and Tuck would've told them already if he'd seen anything on his end. She figured she was just being paranoid, that was all.
The buildings and storefronts that lined her vision were all in various states of decay, their windows shattered and insides long since exposed to the raging elements. They reminded her of dark, gaping maws when she passed them, stuck in perpetual silent screams of fear and anguish. The road was a mess, and though they were careful to avoid the wreckage wherever possible, they often scrambled over cars and even large chunks of crumbled asphalt.
To her relief, Barbarra soon directed them down a side street—Elm, if she could read the faded sign correctly—that had taken less damage. She was surprised to see that Elm was relatively untouched, the sunlight gleaming cheerily along intact windowpanes as if to greet them. Her eyes swept across what she could see in the buildings they passed, hoping to find what she was looking for.
And then—there! She grinned.
"Hold up," she told the group and they stopped, watching her in question as she trotted to one of the windowed stores and ducked inside. She reemerged within seconds, stuffing a newspaper into her belt in haste.
"For my mom," she told them.
Barbarra was glaring at her, nonplussed, so to shut him down she pretended to smoke with her middle finger like it was one of his prized Marlboros and then flipped him off with it. His face cracked, unable to stop the smirk that formed. Wisely, he turned away with a shake of his head and continued down the street. Someone behind her—Shoemaker?—scoffed.
"How is your mom?" Kwan asked as they walked, genuine worry on his face.
"She's mom," Sam deadpanned, not wanting to talk about her mother with anyone, let alone Kwan. She feigned interest in her scanner in the hopes that Kwan wouldn't ask more questions, and thankfully, he didn't.
They walked for what seemed like miles upon endless miles, weaved along Amity's ruins, evaded destroyed roads and infrastructure, until finally, FENTODRONE #4 appeared before them, a lifeless husk casting shadows upon the ground.
Without any words needed between them, Sam and Barbarra pulled their tools from their belts and set to work on it. This one was damaged, and Sam watched as Barbarra pulled the necessary replacement parts from his pack, which he gently laid on the ground in front of them. The rest of their group stood guard, encircling them with their weapons charged and ready.
Thanks to the years they'd spent working together, Sam and Barbarra were up and moving again in a matter of minutes, eyes on their scanners in search of the next drone, which they found a mere two blocks away from the first one.
The third and final drone was further to the East, which they planned to get while traveling to the ectoreactor. Sam shivered as a cool lick of springtime wind swept over them and seeped through her suit and into her bones. She looked up to glare at the stinking green sky, as if she could scold it for the icy intrusion, her teeth gritted against the cold.
But then, suddenly, the top of her vision appeared to flicker, just above where her view became shrouded by the brow of her helmet. She stopped in her tracks and stared. It had been so faint that she would have missed it had she not been looking. It was almost as if the shades of green that swirled within the atmosphere rippled in a small, imperceptible wave, and then was gone.
The rest of her group had stopped too, their figurative hackles raised as they watched her, then followed her gaze to the sky and stared where she did.
"Foley," Barbarra hissed, "report."
"Still clear, guys!" Tucker's voice was as loud and bright as ever, unaware of their unease. "You guys got through those first two drones fast! And the other sweepers are making quick work of the reactor. They have the first of the six fusion cells replaced. A couple of wisps went after them, but Valerie extracted them with no issues."
Sam looked away from the sky then with a shake of her head. "Sorry guys, I thought I saw something, but . . ." She frowned as her stomach roiled again. "It must've been nothing."
Barbarra stared at her with his brows furrowed until Belair joked, "Well, now that you almost gave me a goddamn a heart attack,"—he gestured toward the path ahead with a scarred hand—"shall we?"
Barbarra nodded. "Move out. We have some serious ground to cover before we get to the next drone."
Sam stared at cracked pavement flecked with yellowed grass while she walked, and she cursed herself for not getting more sleep. Her mind was just playing tricks on her, she convinced herself.
The chill of wind and a light mist of rain greeted them then, though it was sparse enough that the sun remained free of the clouds. Sam's free hand drifted into a pocket at her hip where she checked that the two data chips she carried remained dry, and she sighed with relief when she determined that they did, indeed, remain so, and almost seemed warm to the touch.
Perhaps everything was going to be okay, after all, she dared herself to believe. And it worked, because the lightness in her chest was the first she'd felt in years. If it wasn't for her companions, she might've even skipped.
The sun was low in the sky when the third and final drone, FENTODRONE #10, in need of service appeared before them. It lay in the middle of an eastbound road, the one that they would use to travel outside of Amity to reach the reactor, as if it had been guarding the city's entrance before an untimely death consumed it. Its glass dome was cracked, but otherwise remained undamaged.
From where she stood, Sam could see the large, towering structure that stood just beyond the city's borders. With the sun shining behind it, the shadowy details of the reactor were nearly amorphous, but Sam could still see the forms of the other cadets and sweepers peppered in formation at its base, nearly a half mile away from her own group.
She'd been told that sunsets had once been beautiful, but now it was just a mottled patchwork of sickly green that whirled around a sun that sank lower and lower into the horizon. The eddied rays winked off the drone's metal body as Sam and Barbarra worked to reinstate it. They'd just finished inserting its power cell when the thing whirred to life, lights blinking in initiation. It shuddered as it calibrated, beeping softly once it was done.
"Alright Tuck," Sam said into her comm, "this is the last of them."
"Roger that," Tucker replied. "Great work, guys!"
"How's the other crew making out on the reactor?" Barbarra asked through the comm, squinting at it but no doubt struggling to see it in the light of the setting sun.
"Two fusion cells left! And then it's just a few odds and ends after that. Some photocells, some wiring, etcetera, etcetera."
"Man, I am so excited," Dash exclaimed with a whoop, slinging his arm around Kwan's shoulders and shaking his friend in mirth.
Belair and Shoemaker both turned to glare at them, but it was Shoemaker who whacked Dash upside his head. "Knock it off, would ya. Yer gonna draw in wasteland spooks if you keep it up. They smell yer emotions, remember!"
Dashed gulped at that, his arm falling limp to his side. Kwan shook his head at his friend, a small smile at his own lips despite Shoemaker's warning. He turned to Sam. "You almost done?"
Sam nodded as she finished twisting the wingnuts of the drone's body into place. It continued to whir and blink as she released it into the air where it hovered in front of her. She aimed her scanner at it and, with a tap of her gloved finger on the screen, it hummed in response and began its lazy ascent.
She watched it for a moment, admiring the way the sun gleamed along its glass dome, at the manner in which it climbed higher and higher into the skies, its silver body illuminated by the bright green lights that twinkled from within, the sky behind it a ripple of green and—
Sam frowned, her brows knitting as she stared at a sky that once again became a churning wave of shades of radiant emerald. She couldn't make sense of it. It seemed to reach a crescendo then, just as the sun dipped into the horizon line, green fire against the distant mountains. Her weapon fell slack at her side as she stared, transfixed, at the molten sky simmering above her.
She could only watch, wild-eyed, as time seemed to slow and three things happened next, concurrent with the ensuing beats of her heart.
First, the light radiating from the drone flickered from green to an angry red.
Second, the scanner at her arm, in time with the ones her companions bore, began to screech in warning, just as Tucker's panicked voice began shouting, something about an ambush—but Sam could barely hear him, his voice was muffled as if she were underwater.
And third, and perhaps most notably, the whorls of liquid fire above her warped until they became varying sized spheres of shimmering electric green, brighter than the rest of the sky. She barely made sense of the ectoplasmic blast that shot from one of the spheres, a portal, she realized then, and consumed the drone, detonating it in an explosion of white light and sparks.
There was a split second of time in which Sam remained shock still, uncomprehending the world around her, until she was thrown backwards from the aftershock of the blast, her arms swiftly rising to shield her face as the smoking remains of FENTO DRONE #10 plummeted around her.
And then, with the weight of a pile of bricks, her awareness of the world resumed, a mere heartbeat later, as she rolled to her belly and saw a city now bathed in red.
Just as the sirens started.
xXx
Tucker removed his glasses and cleaned them with the sleeve of his shirt as he walked, the dark features of his face drawn tight with worry. He was careful to avoid the flurry of cadets and sweepers bustling past him, which became a more frequent occurrence the closer he got to the upper levels where the communications sector was.
He hadn't known what to make of Sam's mood this morning. She'd been quiet as of late, and the look on her face during Damon's briefing . . . Tucker pursed his lips as he replaced his glasses. She'd seemed resigned, almost, as if she simply couldn't find it within herself to care anymore—about anything. That weak smile she'd given him earlier still had his stomach in a twisted, uneasy knot.
Truthfully, Tucker had been worried about his friend for a while now. Between the loss of her father and the deterioration of her mother's mental state, Sam herself had seemed on the verge of her own breakdown. And considering her position as a high-ranking sweeper . . . Tucker shook his head again.
But he couldn't worry about that now, he realized, as he had a job to do, and worrying about Sam wasn't doing her any favors. He'd talk to her later when she returned. Perhaps he'd even try again to encourage her to seek Jazz's guidance, though Sam was always too proud to admit that she was struggling and had refused Jazz's help the last time she'd offered.
The only help Sam would accept from the youngest Fenton was advice on how to handle Pamela Manson, her mother. Tucker couldn't help but ruminate on just how similar the two Manson women were in that regard, not that he would ever tell Sam that.
Tucker whistled as he strolled into the communications sector, hands in the pockets of his jumpsuit. It was a modest setup, the best they'd been able to scrounge together in the chaos of the battle they'd lost Amity in, and the subsequent years of scavenging they'd done since.
The walls were lined with various screens and computers, the tech not nearly as advanced as the ones in the labs, but good enough that Tucker was able to do what he needed to. At the furthest westward wall of the room, a large virtual map of Amity was stark against the grayness of the walls around it. Though each station had its own less advanced version, the large map would show where each of dispatched persons were located via trackers in each of their helmets. It would also show where the ghosts were.
Several of the other data engineers were already at their stations, murmuring into their headsets, their faces illuminated by their screens. A few of them turned and nodded at Tucker as he passed, which he returned with a grin and a wink.
The bulk of his work was done in the labs with the Fentons, but Tucker spent a lot of his time up here, too, aiding the resistance on the upper levels by working in communications. Truthfully, he'd volunteered, having done so since the first day Sam had been sent to the surface, had always made sure to be a part of every one of her missions. He was her guy in the chair, the guiding voice of reason who protected her in the only way he could.
Tucker reached his station and slumped into a rickety wheeled chair, spinning until he was centered before his keyboard. He positioned his monitors to his liking, then typed his passcode into the compound's database. With a hit of an enter key, the seal of the resistance bloomed to life on his main screen, the other monitors flashing as they initialized.
He was just putting his headset on when he felt a presence behind him. Curious, he spun his chair and was surprised to see it was Maddie Fenton who'd come to see him. The blueish light of his monitors shimmered in her silver and copper hair, reflected along with the concern in her blue-green eyes.
"Oh hey, Mrs. Fenton," he said. "Everything okay?"
She shook her head, kept her voice low when she spoke, "Listen to me Tucker, Damon is a fool. A fool." Her face was pale and contorted into fury as she spat out the words. "The last thing we should be doing is sending out that many people."
Tucker's brows furrowed. "What do you mean?"
"I mean," Maddie said, almost breathless, "whether I'm right or not about a high classed ghost haunting the area, every ghost within a fifty-mile radius will be drawn by so many people."
He felt his heart slip into his throat at her words, at the terror and the anger that settled in the lines of her face. "Did you tell Damon?" he asked her. He stood up then, almost tripping over his chair as it rolled away from him. "Should we go tell him right now?"
Maddie placed her hand on his shoulder to stop him. "No," she said, her voice dripping with venom. "Jack and I tried, before that speech, he . . ." She shook her head again. "He wouldn't listen."
"Let me guess, Vlad," Tucker grumbled. He remembered then, how angry the Fentons had seemed at Damon's briefing.
Maddie nodded once, a slight dip of her chin. "Just watch out for her." Her eyes welled but no tears fell, merely glistened in the light of his monitors. "Please."
"Absolutely," Tucker said. "Sam is family."
"We all are." She smiled softly and drew him into a tight, motherly hug.
A young guard appeared behind them then, his face polite. "I'm sorry, ma'am," he said to Maddie, "but we need to clear the room of nonessential personnel." He gestured towards the door.
Maddie blinked away the mist in her eyes while she nodded quickly. "Of course," she said to the guard. Her hands drifted to Tucker's cheek where she gently patted him in farewell. "Bring Sam to the lab later, would you?"
Tucker gave her one of his famous grins, which did well to ease the tension on the older woman's face, if only a little. "Absolutely, Mrs. Fenton. Sam'll love that."
Maddie's returning smile didn't quite reach her eyes, but she said nothing more as she left.
"Well, that was worrisome," Tucker murmured to himself as he recovered his chair and returned to his station. The smaller monitors on his right were all live with the various video feeds from the microcameras of Sam and her troop. He could see that they were just entering that shitty elevator that Sam always complained about.
He sighed with relief that they hadn't surfaced yet and worked quickly to set up the various programs he'd need in the meantime. The ectoscanners, mission logs, data feeds from hotspots in the city, all were up and functioning in a matter of minutes, though he'd found himself cursing several times at the slowness of the tech. He finished, just in time to see that they were approaching the door that would soon open and release them into that hellish world.
Tucker couldn't help but lean back into his chair and admire his friend then, as he so often did in these precious moments he had to spare before she was dispatched to the surface. Sam was undoubtedly one of the bravest people he had ever met, even if she refused to see it in herself these days.
Whenever he tried to tell her so, she would merely roll her eyes at him and claim the opposite, that she did what she did because she hated the compound, that her time outside was her only source of freedom, which Tucker wholeheartedly believed, but he also knew that was only a fraction of the truth.
Sam did what she did because she wanted to change the world for the better, in the only way that she knew how, and he hoped one day she would come to see herself in that light again. It was why she'd become a sweeper in the first place. Tucker could still remember the joy on her face when Barbarra had selected her for a mentorship all those years ago, and he smiled at the memory.
His smile, however, became rueful as he watched her videofeed. He would try, he decided then, to help his best friend before it became too late, like it was for her mother, before he lost her in that bottomless pit of despair and self-loathing that he could see her hurdling towards. Tucker's hand balled into a fist, the determination settling within him. He would do it, starting tonight.
Sam's voice trilled into the comms then. "You there, Tuck?"
Tucker did his best to force as much enthusiasm into his voice as he could when he said, "You bet!" And then he paused, his finger still pressed to the button of his headset, his thoughts racing on how to warn her. "Please be careful out there," he said. He chewed on his words for a moment before adding, "The Fentons are pretty spooked."
Sam didn't respond, and Tucker felt himself wince at the silence on their comm-line. He could see from the monitors that Sam's troop had stopped to look at her.
Then, Barbarra's voice was drawling on the comms, his tone low and pissed, "Foley, yer scarin' the kiddies."
Oops. Another wince and he gritted his teeth a bit. "My bad everybody, shutting up now."
Fortunately, the remainder of their mission went without a hitch, all things considered, and Tucker found himself sighing in relief. There had been a moment when they'd first started heading East that the six of them had stopped dead in their tracks, and then Barbarra was on the line demanding a report, though Tucker had been unable to see why.
Then they'd resumed onward without incident.
His eyes continued to scour his screens, finger poised on his mouse like the trigger of a gun, ready to react to the slightest change in data. He watched the ectocontamination needle of Fentongeiger, a small digital gauge at the top of his monitors, noted its position and that it remained unchanging, and surveyed the scanners. The data that Maddie had found had showed a pattern of spikes, too obscure for an untrained eye, but now he knew what he was looking for.
And so far? Blank. Marvelously blank, as if the world was dead—which it was, he realized in dark amusement, but only now it was void of the dead. Oh, the irony. He snorted to himself, relaxing a little as Sam and her party approached the remaining drone. He glanced to the bottom of his screen to check the status of the other sweepers that were dispatched and grinned.
"Alright, Tuck, this is the last of them," Sam said, and Tucker could see from her microcamera that she was just about done with reassembling the drone.
"Roger that," Tucker said. "Great work, guys!"
"How's the other crew making out on the reactor?" Barbarra asked.
"Two fusion cells left! And then it's just a few odds and ends after that. Some photocells, some wiring, etcetera, etcetera." Tucker swung his chair back and forth as he spoke. The worry and the fear for his friend were slowly lifting from his shoulders, and he found himself sitting straighter in his chair.
He imagined then, what life would be like when the fusion core was finally operational, and he hummed to himself, low enough not to disturb the other engineers. His stomach seemed to growl in anticipation as he thought about how much better the food would get with adequate power in the compound, not to mention how much more tech they'd be able to use and develop.
A movement in the corner of his screen startled him then, left him scrambling as he was jerked from his reverie. It was the Fentongeiger, its needle stuttering as it first dropped low to the left, the lowest part of the gauge, and then flung to the highest part of the redzone and shook there.
"What the Fu—" Tucker started to say, and then his eyes widened as the world tilted into chaos.
Sirens wailed, ectoscensors screaming as hundreds of signatures sprung to life on his screen. "Shitshitshitshitshit," was all he could say has he checked all his screens, icy terror freezing the blood in his veins. Around him, the frantic beeps of the other stations were a symphony as they sounded with his own, his fellow data engineers all pitched into a state of panic.
Tucker was hollering into his communicator, warning the sweepers about the sudden ambush, just as the door to the communications sector hissed open and Damon Gray stormed inside, his voice booming, "What is going on in here?"
But Tucker barely heard him, because he'd just watched Sam get blasted from a goddamn portal that opened in the sky.
The wailing of the sirens in Amity could be heard, even from where they were underground, and every one of them sent a frozen lance of dread through Tucker's heart and into his stomach.
"Look!" someone shouted.
They all turned to look at the main screen, at the map of Amity that had every sweeper and cadet pinpointed with their trackers. It was there they saw the hundreds of freshly spawned ectosignatures closing in like a shroud of death. And then the largest of them all surfaced, flickering briefly, only to disappear once more, but it was long enough for Tucker to realize that Maddie Fenton had been right all along.
"Dear god," Damon said, "what have I done."
xXx
The world was a ringing mess in her ears. Was it the sirens? The aftermath of the drone that exploded? She couldn't tell.
Bits of metal and glass peppered the arms of her suit, cut into her hands, parts of her face. She could feel a particularly deep laceration on her cheek as it began to bleed, the left side of her face now warm and wet.
Dazed, she realized. She was Dazed.
A voice in her head was screaming at her. She couldn't tell if it was her own monologue or if it was Tucker hollering warnings and other obscenities into her headset. But she knew she needed to move. Now.
Sam rolled sideways, just as another ectoplasmic blast set where she'd just been aflame with bright green embers. She didn't hesitate as she pulled the trigger of her weapon and returned her own fire, still on her back, and knew she'd hit her mark when her ghostly assailant shrieked and burst apart in tendrils of coiled green.
Hands appeared under her arms and hoisted her to feet, just as her dazed stupor ebbed and horrific clarity was wrenched forward. She met the stricken looks of Dash and Kwan, as it had been them who had grabbed her.
"Sam!" Tucker shouted, "Behind you!"
Sam whirled and barely saw her target just as yet another ghost was blasted into fragmented bits, her gun smoking as she said, "We need to move." Her voice was somehow calm, her years of training binding her nerves and her terror so that her composure could then take over.
Dash and Kwan stepped forward to either side of her, their faces grim and determined though their hands still shook, ever so slightly, as they raised their weapons and filled the skies with their own blasts. The three of them formed a line, as Tucker rallied their remaining party to cover their backs, and then it was the six of them in a circle.
The ghosts descended from the skies in a horde of teeth and fury and flashes of red glowing eyes. They were clawed but still somehow shapeless, with blasts of destructive energy surging from their mouths like breaths of fire. There were so many of them that the sky became a blanketed undulating mess of horror. Their wrathful screams were as deafening as the sirens that wailed in Amity, as if the city was a sentient beast brought to face its own demons.
Sam could barely keep her feet planted as her weapon recoiled over and over and ectoplasm rained from the heavens, pelting her in flecks of searing green that burned her skin like acid.
"Keep raining hellfire on these bastards," Barbarra shouted in command. "We need to cover the reactor." Then his free hand was at his ear, touching his communicator. "Foley! Where do we stand on the reactor!"
"One fusion cell left and it's almost done," Tucker told them in a shaky but firm voice.
"What kinda fuckery we facing here, boy?" Barbarra growled into the comm.
"All relatively low level, just above wisps in class, but there are a ton of them," Tucker replied. "They're coming in mainly from northeast, from where those things in the sky are, but there's more coming in from the wastes but . . ."
"But what?" Shoemaker's voice snapped on the comm.
"Spit it out, boy," Barbarra's voice now, just as a ghost that had gotten too close was vaporized by his ectogun.
"There's something else out there, but we think it's shielded somehow. But there was a spike on the sensors"—Sam felt her dread resurface as Tucker spoke—"and it was huge."
"What kind of spike?" Barbarra demanded.
"Off the charts," Tucker said darkly, and Sam's dread became all-encompassing. "I've never seen anything like it, not since . . ." he trailed off, but he didn't have to finish his train of thought because they all knew.
Because the last time there'd been readings this astronomical, the Fright Night had appeared and obliterated the city—as well as a large chunk of its population.
"Is it back?" Sam breathed into her comm, sidestepping a narrowly avoided blast and retaliating with one of her own. "Tucker, is it back?"
"I don't think so." Tucker's voice was hollow. "I compared the two signatures, and I don't think they're the same ghost."
"There's more than one of those things?" Dash shrieked, grunting as a flaming lick of ectoenergy burned his shoulder. He fell to a knee, but Sam and Kwan were quick to cover him and annihilate the spook that swept in for the killing blow, its yellowed fangs but a mere inch from Dash's throat before it disintegrated.
"Guys, you have to get moving. Those ghosts aren't stopping, and you have more coming in from the wastes one hundred yards out," Tucker said.
"Shit," Barbarra cursed, snatching Dash by the neck of his suit and hauling him to his feet. "Move out, all of you! We need to get to the reactor. We ain't done until it's operational."
Sam allowed herself a millisecond in which she spared a glance eastward, to where the towering form of the ectreactor was alight with flashes of green within the plumes of smoke now spiraling around it. It almost resembled an unearthly thundercloud, with the bellows and shouts of the humans and ghosts forming its thunder.
"All together!" Barbarra commanded.
And then they ran.
Well jogged, really, as they still had to maintain their tight circle, leaving no backs unguarded.
Sam could think of nothing else but the task at hand as she moved. Blast, after blast, after blast. Screeches, and howls, and shouts, and curses, all intertwined as her eyes burned from the light and the ectoplasm that rained upon them. She couldn't allow herself to think, wouldn't allow herself to think, as there was no time for her to be afraid of what Tucker had informed them of. Best to stop thinking—and keep blasting.
Somehow, her hands remained steady, even as the shouts and yelps of the other sweepers and cadets became louder. She ignored the lifeless lumps that belonged to faces she refused to recognize. Merely stepped over them and kept moving.
It wasn't until the reactor loomed above them and they became surrounded by the other humans that their circle yawned wide and formed a line. The horde above them seemed to swell as it seethed, hundreds and hundreds of ghosts shaping into a single monstrosity.
"Oh my god," someone breathed.
"RUN," Tucker screamed into the comm so loud that their headsets crackled.
But there wasn't time, not as the horde roared and rippled in a single, collective wave and released a giant column of green fire upon them all.
xXx
Valerie hadn't known what to expect when she'd first set foot upon the dirt of the hell-frozen world. Her scanner was bare, and the idiot babbling in her ear had nothing useful to tell her, but her father had been uneasy as he and Vlad had followed her troop to the upper levels.
Vlad, ever her voice of reason, had seemed as cool and calculated as ever. He'd even gone as far to smile and ask for as many specimens as possible, which was his usual request of her, but he'd grinned so fiercely when he'd said it that she'd been taken slightly aback.
And then her father, ever the stoic individual, had seemed troubled, and that had troubled her. But Vlad had said she'd be safe, and both she and her father believed him, undoubtedly, because Vlad had yet to steer them wrong. She'd owed so much to him over the years that the last thing she would do was doubt him now.
She didn't know her troop at all, didn't particularly care to. They were just nameless people who would inevitably get in her way. So, she paid them no mind, all but ignored whomever of those damned engineers was squawking in her comm and set forth through the city at a brisk pace. She followed the map on her arm using the coordinates that Vlad had given her, and made the trek to the wastelands, just beyond the reactor that the other sweepers would be working on, and there she would wait.
Vlad hadn't told her why he'd suspected spooks would appear, though she supposed it had something to do with the reactor, that once its dormant fusion cells flooded with life and power that it would create a beacon. And then they would come.
Valerie felt her fingers tremble in anticipation. Spooks, ghouls, ghosts—no matter the name, they were monsters. Abominations that she would stop at nothing to eradicate from her city, from her planet.
So, it was no surprise that the moment her scanners flared to life and the city itself seemed to scream in terror that Valerie smiled. Not in joy, but in greeting.
They'd been no match for her, the little wispy assholes that darted from some unseen place in the world beyond, hurtling out of that hazy green mist that lingered and poisoned the earth. She obliterated some, while others were sucked into the containment diffusor on her wrist where they would be stored for Vlad to dissect later.
Her grin was feral as she ripped through a flock of them, her squad a mere blur in her peripheral as they struggled to keep pace.
It was when the sky opened wide to reveal the pits of hell that Valerie finally paused, her ringlet hair whipping behind her as she turned to watch a horde of ghosts descend upon the reactor and the people working on it.
Valerie froze, could only watch in a horrified daze as the spooks slaughtered them, her people, until she saw Sam Manson and her troop running brashly towards the madness and tugging Valerie back to her senses. She didn't think twice when she threw her body into an all-out sprint in their direction, her useless troop a straggling shadow behind her.
Suddenly, Vlad's voice was in her ear, through her comm, "My dear Valerie," he crooned in greeting.
Valerie nearly stumbled in shock as she ran. "Mr. Masters?" she rasped between breaths, incredulous. "You're on the comms?"
"Just your personal channel," he said, his voice lilted as if fighting back a laugh. "Needed to keep the imbeciles off."
"As much as I'd love to chat," she grumbled as she leaped over a heap of rock, "I'm a little busy at the moment, sir."
"Ah yes, that's actually what I'm wanting to discuss with you," he said. "There is an ectosignature that I need to you to track for me, and seize it, if you can. Well, there's several, actually, but only one has been verified at the moment."
Valerie's scanner pinged, and when she looked at the directives her eyes widened. She nearly tripped again.
Her heart rattled in her chest as fear and anger and brutal loathing boiled inside of her, at the profile that appeared on her screen in correlation of its ectosignature, and she pushed her legs harder, her feet falling faster and faster as she sprinted across the earth.
Just as the horde above torched the humans below.
"NO!" Valerie screamed, as she tripped and fell to her knees, her gun blasting any and every ghost she saw as she fell. She tucked and rolled and was on her feet again within a heartbeat, her wide eyes glistening from the smoke, her nose burning even through the filtration device in her helmet.
People rose and staggered about in the smoke, ectoblasts streaking through the sky as all-out war raged on the battlefield in front of her and then . . .
And then there was Sam, racing for the reactor.
Valerie tried to reach her, but the ghosts were relentless in their attack. She forced her way through them, the mingled throngs of humans and spooks, roaring in her rage as she annihilated any ghost that dared get close to her. She tried her best to watch Sam's back, but her eyes also remained peeled for any signs of her targets.
Suddenly, Sam lurched for a lever and heaved it upward.
The ground quaked and the horde of ghosts burst apart as the fusion core of the reactor surged to life, brilliant blue light cleaving through the sea of green and bathing the battlefield in a wash of cerulean.
"SAM!" Valerie screamed as she watched the ghosts descend on her in an instant.
xXx
There was blood and ectoplasmic fire everywhere.
Sam coughed and winced when her lip stung from a gash that now pierced her flesh. Her arm was badly burned and the hair on the left side of her head was singed and stinking. Her helmet . . .
She coughed again, the coppery tang of ectocontamination as sharp as the smoke in her lungs, and she swore under her breath as she realized that her helmet was indeed broken, as was her communicator.
She surveyed the carnage around her. She had no idea who from her party was alive or dead.
The horde was swelling again, no doubt in preparation to release more fire upon them.
Sam knew she had only one option as she watched a ghost shred the sweeper working on the reactor into pieces. She'd reviewed the schematics earlier, and with only a little bit of wiring remaining in the last of the fusion cells, she knew she could do it. Had to do it.
So she did.
She forced her aching legs into a sprint and made it to the reactor's control panel within seconds. Quickly, she surveyed the work that had been done, noted that the fusion cells were indeed installed, and with hands that only now had begun to shake, she resumed the last bit of wiring needed to engage the reactor's core. She tried to ignore how slick the wires were from blood that was not her own.
Her heart lurched into her throat when she heard that telltale shriek again, as the horde drew in to summon their fire, and then Sam jumped, and with all her might she forced the lever upward.
The ground shook and a booming noise swallowed her with a flash of blinding blue light. The horde roared in outrage and splintered apart into separate entities once again, but they immediately homed in on her.
She raised her weapon. But what good would that do? There were hundreds of them, those glowing monsters with their translucent bodies rippling. Mouths hung open as they screamed, and then commenced their ambush with deathly precision.
Sam cried out as she was thrown backwards by a powerful ectoplasmic blast, her head spinning and ringing from a blow to her head.
"SAM!" she heard someone—Valerie?—scream. A flash of red in human form was blasting furiously as the ghosts bombarded her. "SAM! NO!"
Bleary eyed, Sam saw her troop again as some of the smoke cleared, just in time to see Barbarra get struck directly in his side, his arm now hanging limp as he continued to discharge his weapon with his other hand; Shoemaker and Belair were back to back, voices loud as they screamed and fired; Dash cried out in fright as he was thrown to his back; Kwan's eyes were full of terrified tears as he lifted Dash to his feet.
Valerie forced her way through the madness, fingers extending and reaching for Sam's. Her horrified eyes were wide, nostrils flared, raven hair singed and flying. She leapt and reached wildly for Sam, just as Sam groggily sat up and tried to meet her halfway with a hand of her own—
Their fingers brushed and then missed when a gaggle of spooks seized Sam under her arms and dragged her skywards, high into the hazy green fog of the sky. Frozen wind ripped through her hair, buildings flashing past her, the tops of trees a mere greyish-brown blur.
Sam screamed as her senses came back in a rush of cold air on her face. She flailed and kicked until she aimed her weapon blindly above her head and blasted.
There was an intense bout of hissing and then suddenly—
Suddenly, she was falling.
Wind ripped like claws through her lungs and her throat became raw as she screamed. She'd been close enough to the tops of trees that her body automatically began reaching, hands grappling for branches that snapped and imbedded into her hands, but slowed her fall, nonetheless. When that branch snapped, she thought nothing about the pain or the damage to her hands as she reached instinctively for the next.
And the next.
Branches cracked and whipped as they broke from her weight, as well as her collision with those she did not grab. Sam could think of nothing else but survival as she reached and reached, thankful for the generous amount of adrenaline coursing through her system, numbing the agony she would've felt otherwise.
When she finally did hit the ground the sound of bone cracking resounded loudly through her ears, temporarily incapacitating her as the wind rushed from her lungs from the impact. Her hands were numb and slick with her blood; her left wrist was throbbing with pain and a bulge protruded from the joint of her elbow. She lay there, gasping for air but miraculously alive.
For now, at least.
She tried to sit up, but struggled, her breaths wheezing and labored. A few feet to her right was her ectogun and she reached for it. Once the weapon was firmly grasped in her less injured hand, she staggered to her feet.
The dizzying world around her seemed to slow and still. She couldn't place the feeling, but it was like the wind and the trees and, hell, even the buildings took in a single collective breath and held it in. Everything became so quiet that her ears started to ring, an electrifying rush zinging around her in a way that had the hair on her arms standing on end.
And somehow, despite the graveness of her injuries, there was more dread . . . absolute dread was in her stomach. The fear one gets when they turn their back to the darkness and the unknown monsters within. She was terrified, so utterly consumed by the fear that clawed about in the pit of her stomach.
A small voice inside her head told her to run.
But then, she felt it. The prickling along the back of her neck that froze her blood in her veins, a chill that had nothing to do with the cold. She was being watched.
She turned, gun held firm despite the shaking of her hands and the slickness of her blood.
A humanoid figure was there, masked by darkness.
"Barbarra," she croaked through the fire in her lungs, forcing a bravado into her voice that she didn't at all have. "That you?"
The figure approached, slowly, and Sam squinted trying to see. Her fingers traced the trigger of her weapon, flicking the safety back. She stepped back—once, twice, then staggered a little bit over some rubble.
The figure took shape. The second Sam spotted the glowing green eyes from under the figure's hood, she fired. Shot after shot, she discharged her firearm again, and again, and again, until a cloud of smoke filled the air and turned it a dusty red from the lights of the drones. She wanted to run, but she couldn't feel her legs, and didn't know where to go as the red smoke was disorientating.
She likely wouldn't have been able to run, anyway, not with the state of her body. Without her adrenaline propelling her onward, she feared she'd be unable to stand at all.
So, she took a deep, painful breath and stood her ground.
"I don't know who the hell you think you are, ghost, but I strongly suggest getting the hell outta town before I vaporize you."
She remained still, slowly panning her weapon side to side as she looked down the barrel, ready for the slightest movement.
And then she saw it, twenty feet to her left. It was the humanoid ghost again, standing eerily still. With the smoke beginning to clear, she could now see it wore a black cloak lined with white, billowing in the wind around itself.
She aimed again and fired.
But the ghost never even bothered to look her way. It raised a hand and caught the charge as if they were playing a casual game of toss between friends. The green undulating energy shone bright within its gloved palm and illuminated the features of its face.
The dread in her stomach pooled and then simmered into pure unrelenting terror as she realized then which ghost she was up against. Her breath hitched.
It was the Phantom.
A/N: Holy damn, I didn't anticipate that this chapter would become such a behemoth! I almost divided it in half, but I really want to get the plot moving and figured that wouldn't have been the best idea, so there ya go! There was originally going to be more, but I'm beyond 8k with this hahaha I hope long chapters are okay.
I really had fun writing this one with the different perspectives. It was fun to tie in the different POV pieces so they overlapped, which was a bit of an experiment for me. I hope it came out well for you guys on the reader's end.
I'm disappointed I wasn't able to get this out sooner. My goal is biweekly, but I was moved to a new jobsite that's pretty high profile and has a LOT of overtime (gotta love that construction worker schedule haha). I'm just exhausted constantly these days, but I'll do my best to keep somewhat close to my schedule. I will be on vacation all next week so I'm not sure how much writing I'll get done, but I'll try. I don't think the next chapter will be as long as the last two were, but who knows, these words seem to write themselves sometimes.
As always, thanks so much for reading!
-Roar