Chapter 6: Bitter Reminders
"You sleep like the dead, fuck."
A heavy thud hit the hip of the snoozing Agent, startling him awake. The plastic cackling of empty rifle magazines tumbled into the sand. DJ jumped off the top of the buggy with a beaten, olive green ammo box in hand next to him.
"Jebus. Couldn't you have just shaken me or something?" Lawrence grumbled. He shoved the duffle bag onto the sand, shifting it up against the concrete door.
"No shot of that." DJ snorted lightly as he sat down next to Lawrence, putting the box between them.
"I don't wanna risk you being an actual Zed and biting me."
Lawrence waved his hand dismissively before yawning. He looked at the bag as DJ picked up a magazine and dumped the glassy sand out. "What's the deal with all these?"
DJ jabbed his thumb back up to the buggy, the conical muzzle of a gun hanging over the edge. "We're going through the Red Zone. That Bren gun will be the difference between being Zed chow and making it across in one piece."
The Agent stood and clambered atop to look over the aging war machine. A scrapmetal shroud, crudely welded into place, surrounded the barrel. The offset irons were sheared off, replaced with a taped laser light offset onto the side. Several deep pitting marks and sanding scratches coated the metal body while a beaten SCAR-H stock was haphazardly attached to the back. By all accounts, a trademark abomination of the Alliance armory.
"I somehow find that hard to believe…"
The older Operative paused loading bullets. He opened his mouth, but opted instead to just shake his head and focus back on his task. Lawrence stepped down onto the hood, sitting atop the wheel well.
"Hey. I've got a question."
"Is it about the size of my dick? Because I swear if i have to answer one more-"
"What the fuck, no."
DJ waved his hand in a circular motion. "Alright, proceed."
Lawrence shifted the cloth mask down off his face, taking a deep breath.
"What… happened exactly at Facility 030?"
The pang of a spring detonating inside the fresh magazine in the Operative's hand rang out. The base of the magazine blew out with several rounds scattering across the air. He glanced over in Lawrence's direction.
"Where did you hear that name?"
Lawrence reflexively recoiled when he caught DJ's glower.
"It was a taught… example of why staying alert even in peaceful scenarios makes for a superior position in the Agency. I wanted to know more about you without prying before we met since, y'know, most anyone knows is the history behind your many nicknames."
A heavy sigh escaped DJ. He placed his hands on his knees and stood, looking at the now broken magazine in hand before plopping it into the crimson sand.
"For the first time in forever, I think that's actually a somewhat reasonable use for the memory of that colossal fuckup." He fished a new magazine from the bag and passed it to Lawrence. "Alright. You start filling these and I'll tell you what happened. As it happened, no fluffing or technical jargon for security's sake."
The older shifted up onto the buggy's concrete door edge, while Lawrence moved down into the spot next to the ammo box.
"To start with, what DO you actually know about it?"
Grabbing a fistful of bullets, Lawrence cleared his throat. "Well, from what records survived, it was a mission to eliminate the site commander with two squads of Operatives-"
"Okay someone didn't want their feelings hurt, or for the Auditor to rip them a new one. First off, we were all trainees, it was our graduation mission."
"Right. Uhhh, there was a solid execution to the plan that you had, but it was plagued by poor unit decisions mid mission."
DJ harshly snorted. "Fuck, you could end there and you'd be mostly accurate."
"There was a lot of back and forth in the files' revision notes about specifics, but it was generally suspected that there were two key start points for the… what was the term, 'pyrrhic victory' for the Antithesis. Operative Aaron Walker stormed in before the facility could be secured, and an unnamed Operative disguised as an Engineer unit openly speaking about their personal objective in front of a security camera while the security station was in fact their target."
The older Operative was quiet as he listened, the gentle clicking of bullets being slotted into the magazine filling the silent space between, though a rather grizzly teeth grinding sound emanated from DJ between clicks.
"The Coverup King himself. My former squadmate Eli was the unnamed trainee, my partner while I was disguised as an Agent. Not only did I have to point out to him he just gave away the plan in front of a camera, I fucking saved his life from ending not a few minutes later after we confirmed the base commander's death."
Lawrence nodded, snapping his fingers as he went for another handful of rounds. "That's right, an Agent unit was alerted on site and confronted the suspected Operative, ready to eliminate them, when the other Agent with the Operative, which was you, ended the unit's life from behind. Intelligence reports suggested up until that point that you were simply an Agent unit who was deceived. Once that was established a communications jammer was set up and reinforcements scrambled to the site."
Tossing up the loaded magazine to DJ, Lawrence started on another while DJ loaded the fresh bullets into the scrapmetal firearm. "It was suspected an entire squad was killed on site before it was destroyed with demolition charges, with a single squad's remains retreating away. A pyrrhic victory was established for both sides as far as the report's last revision went."
"How did they figure that? Several Antithesis trainees eliminated at the cost of an outpost didn't check out in the Agency protocol as a loss last I knew."
Lawrence had paused his loading, looking up at the sky through his shades. "The loss of so many Operatives at a single time was previously unheard of for Antithesis operations, but the facility was a key security foothold in the subregion and it made many more facilities vulnerable in the process of its destruction."
"So, I guess Agency intel gathering wasn't as skewed or biased as we thought back then. You're missing some finer details; but that's the jist of it really." DJ sighed, slipping off the buggy and stepping forward to look over the dune.
"I had heard from a few older Antithesis members that the post briefing didn't go so well…"
DJ turned to the Agent and lifted his shirt. Just under his black scale aesthetic kevlar plate was a gaping, round scar in his abdomen. "You could say that."
"Were… you nearly executed or something?"
"Fuck no, I got promoted." He dropped his shirt and fixed his plating back straight before folding his arms. "Only member of the team, bar Hank, to make it without a redo."
His face darkened as he recalled back, staring into the red sand. "Taos was tasked with our debrief. He articulated every mistake made on site clearly. Aaron's flagrant charging in and attempt to stop the facility detonation. Hina's blatant failure of maintaining stealth by walking literally into a patrolling grunt and also trying to stop detonation. Eli's beyond belief fuckup of talking about the plan in front of a security camera and Samantha's distinctive foregoing of everything Taos had taught her and the rest of their squad. Fuck, I even tried to argue against my promotion BECAUSE I couldn't trigger my energy abilities mid mission."
"Samantha tries to take her own life after Eli gets shitty and sarcastic with me over the promotion, and I get shot in the gut when we tried to stop her. The successive time after that was the rest of the squad, bar Hank, treating my existence with spite for THEIR failure."
He punted the broken magazine from earlier harshly from the sand, sending it flying as his jagged teeth flashed in the sunlight. "If there's one thing I regret not doing during my time in Recon it was not leaving Eli and Hina to die when we went on the Operative reacquisition assignment. Would've been a fucking service to the damned dissenters in training."
DJ's heated state had left Lawrence at a pause midway through loading the last magazine, taking a moment to observe his body language that all screamed bloody murder.
A heavy sigh escaped the Operative as he unclenched his fists. He loosened his stance and cast an unintentionally bitter glare at the Agent. "There's a reason I don't speak of or recall those times. Is it more understandable now?"
Lawrence gave a quick nod, sliding the last few rounds into the magazine and putting it back into the bag with the rest. DJ settled back down against the buggy, steadying his breath.
"When you're done, look in the bag in the back. You'll need protection where we're going."
"I've got anti-radiation cells-"
"Not from radiation. From the Dissonance fields. Part of your job is to document and report on what's out here right? More and more energy anomalies are expanding out of the Blue Zone, so until we're in there, you need protection since you'll be on the gun." DJ rather soberingly explained. "Or you'll end up like that poor fucker over there."
Lawrence followed DJ's arm to the thing he was pointing at, or rather, the person on the next to non-existent road.
A humanoid figure with tightly constricting belts around its body seemed to be slowly wandering aimlessly, heavy disfiguration like skin and flesh either melted or missing with exposed bones as it seemed to just meander with a step every few seconds in the distance. "My yelling probably woke it up. Abominations aren't uncommon around here."
"What the fuck."
DJ shrugged. "Agency loved its experiments out here, especially after they changed from 'Human Warfare' to 'Hank Wimbleton', so they readopted early Nexus project tactics like Abomination and patient testing, since no one cared about the poor, homeless or unstable going missing. Though that one there has been exposed to a Dissonance field."
As Lawrence rose, DJ shoved the empty ammo box into the bag with the magazines and pushed the Agent up by his boot to the roof hatch, keeping an eye on the lumbering subject.
"Shit's gonna get weird from here on out. Everything is considered hostile. No matter what it looks like, shoot it."
Clambering inside, Lawrence dug around in the back, finding the extra bag in question to be the same one he carried from the Technocracy storefront. As he looked inside, a gunshot rang from outside, followed by a distant wet splatter and a thud. DJ slipped in and into the driver's seat.
The contents of the bag were an odd combination of civilian and foreign; a USB power bank, some charger cables for devices, a few metal containers marked with a red NC, and a black plastic helmet with a long chainmail-like scarf hanging off the back.
"That helmet looks like nothing, but it's reinforced to prevent Dissonance afflictions from behind. You can avoid the ones from the front easy enough."
"Guess I'll take your word for it." He donned the odd helmet and shifted the cape-like scarf behind him, climbing back to the middle and settling down in the gunner squat seat. "What's with the power device?"
DJ looked back, slipping his red glare glasses on and flipping a switch on the ramshackle dashboard. A bass guitar riff filtered from the speakers, gradually picked up volume, and reverberated from the heavy vehicle as the lyrics came in.
'There must be some kind of way out of here…'
"Music makes the drive to the actual Red Zone danger field go by faster. Once we start seeing roaming Sleepwalkers, we'll silent run."
DJ slapped the start button atop the dashboard, the engine sputtering to life and roaring as they set off past the rusted chainlink and ruins, Lawrence fixed his makeshift shemagh as he held onto the stock of the mounted machine gun.
The feeling of being watched almost immediately had the young Agent on edge. Like the sky itself seemed to be glaring at the intruders to this foreign place.