Chapter 12.1 | Vixen A.D. 2

Note: This chapter ended up huge. I will split it into a few smaller chapters.

Mace knew it was a small hallmark of insanity to return to the research data so soon.

But…

He wanted to check something again. The Singe was still nagging at him, and Mace wasn’t going to let it bother him all night. He needed to check up on what research was done at Delta while he was away, if any. Earlier, he’d only pulled whatever outside divisions recorded.

Then again, Delta’s access to the rest of Neo Mars’ science division was largely unexamined, so it was possible new research had been gathered from around the planet and he just hadn’t discovered it yet. It didn’t look like anyone made it to Delta, anyway, so he’d probably have to rely on sifting through the logs more.

Mace sought the nearest elevator.

He pressed a few buttons on the pad, calling it up, then boarded it and left. Not long after, he was out of the elevator, past the doors, and making his way to one of the Operations rooms.

North was closest and would have better access than the lesser equipped rooms. Mace muttered nothing in particular and made his way into North Ops 2.

He stepped past the door as it opened and glanced around the room, pacing up one of the short staircases onto the elevated half-level of the room. Mace made his way to the row of consoles, equipment, desks, displays, and other technological equipment.

The half-level elevated him enough over the floor to see out the wide array of reinforced polyacrylate windows ahead that gazed into Neo Mars’ sunrise, horizon, and blood skies. They weren’t always like that, Mace knew.

He’d woken up to blue skies and death.

The weather was weird sometimes, probably a distant echo of Neo Mars’ previous atmosphere reverberating through the terraformed sky occasionally. Mace found a chair and sat in it after studying the horizon and centered himself in front of some consoles, keyboards, and displays. He leaned forward.

After scanning more reports, he came across one that looked promising. The first couple were mildly disappointing, with one being mostly hopeless in tone. Mace was hoping these would be different.

He opened the first one and narrowed his gaze. The digital text and abstracts came across the display with precision and ease. Work had to be done somewhere on The Singe, then, given how these seemed more recent.

More work than he expected.

Which was good, mostly. What if it’s hopeless news again? He continued reading, paying no mind to the first few anxious thoughts that came to him.

After a few moments, he was onto the next page of the lab abstract. 

The information from earlier was confirmed. The Singe Complex did seem to be something of a complex of bits of pieces of other pathogen types. He wondered how much went into exploring that, financially, in pre-outbreak Earth money.

Trillions, probably, at least.

Mace continued on. He paused.

Was there classified information shared to him months back?

He squinted, trying to scan the dark recesses of his mind, looking in the pit of his head for any memories to confirm his suspicions. I was told… what was I told… I was told…

Mace groaned. He just wanted to be clear headed. Every step forward seemed like another few more back with his fleeting amnesia.

Remember that. Remember this.

Remember I forgot.

He let out a short, annoyed breath of air.

“Fuck,” he said to no one in particular.

He lowered his forehead to meet his palms. Before he could really spend too much time on trying to remember, a ping came through. His chronometer chimed, alerted him, and the display lit up.

An incoming message.

Mace’s eyes widened. He leaned forward, typed in some command, and used a tracking pointer to open the message. The download began. Mace squinted.

From the looks of it, the video message—now obvious by the file type—was sent from a facility.

Mace played it. The first thing he saw was another kitsune woman, this time with black rimmed glasses, in a lab coat, in disarray, sweating and breathing heavily. Her words came next. “This is Dr. Addison Charm,” she said. “I’m at Outpost K-North, Building B, Lab 10-7. I’ve been surviving for weeks… running out of food… saw Delta had requested access to my logs last night. Please… if someone is there, send help… they’re coming… and I have strong reason to believe—”

Mace sighed as the video faded. “Believe? What?” Mace whispered beneath tense breath.

He heard Cinder’s voice. “What’s going on?”

“Did I see another kitsune?” Faye asked. “Was that another kitsune, like us?”

Mace slowly spun in his chair. “Yes,” he said. “A scientist. She’s trapped 48km away from Delta.”

“How do you know?”

“I know the layout,” Mace said. “And I know where her SOS was recorded. K-North Research, and that’s a TRAM connected lab.”

“Is she alive?” Cinder asked.

Mace shrugged. He stood. “She seems to be, or at least is alive as of now.”

“When was that transmission’s video recorded?” Cinder asked again.

Faye nodded. “Recent?” she added.

“As in less than twelve hours from the metadata,” he replied.

“Shit!” Faye shouted. “Fuck man, we got to get her!”

Mace agreed, making his way past them. “Yes. We’ll gear up,” Mace started.

Cinder walked on his left side, keeping close to him. “Same as last time?”

“I think someone should hang back.”

“Fuck that.”

Faye nodded. “You risk death, we risk death. We’re not going somewhere unless you’re there too, and neither of us are going to let you charge in by yourself alone.”

Mace sighed.

“I’m not staying,” Cinder said. “Period.”

“You really aren’t going to let me do this by myself, are you?”

The kitsunes shook their heads.

“Nope,” Faye said.

“No,” Cinder added.

Mace nodded. They are protective . “Okay. Together.” Mace smiled.

They grinned. With that, Mace led them to get ready.

Charm seemed to have more to say. If he, Faye, and Cinder could save her, bring her home… perhaps progress could be made.

The less lonely, the happier they’d all be.

And Dr. Charm was a kitsune, and that might help them there, since there weren’t many kitsunes around to begin with. And surviving a zombie wasteland didn’t encourage stable numbers.

He opened the armory doors once they were all there. Mace and the kitsunes might even end The Singe, even. Hell. That’d be nice.

***

They made their way into the airlock after grabbing some gear.

Mace wanted to make this quick. He didn’t like the idea of an entire bunker and research station losing contact. Having a lone survivor asking for help made him uneasy, mostly because he didn’t know if the survivor was still alive.

What if it was too late? What if everything had gone wrong and the woman was now something else, something long infected and inhuman? Mace shook his head. There was only one way to know.

“Everyone ready?” he asked.

Cinder turned to him and smiled. She gripped her carbine. “Ready.”

“Make that three,” Faye smirked. She nudged Cinder. “You look good with that in your hands.”

“Shut up,” Cinder replied with a giggle.

Faye laughed. “Alright, that made me feel a little better.”

“Stick close to me. Cinder, remember, anything tries getting in here besides us, blow it away,” Mace instructed.

Cinder nodded. “Understood.”

“Good. Let’s do this,” Mace replied. He hit the switch to start the tram, then dialed in the coordinates that would direct it to RESEARCH 43. The tram whirred, and a hybrid engine spun, a maglev track and invisible electromagnetic gearset tugging its metal mass forward.

He watched as the tunnel of Martian rock passed over them, sharp and dark in the shadows of the mined pathways. Mace knew they’d meet resistance. He always did.

The Singe was there, waiting for him, patiently. He knew it would be, as always. And now, he thought back to the giant thing that took out his transport, and how it’d managed to attach massive firearms on both arms. It was huge. Towering.

How long before they were all like that? What it some experiment? Is that what was waiting for them at Research? Mace let out a sigh.

“What’s on your mind?” Faye asked.

“Memories,” he said. “I saw a big one of these things. It had big ass missile launchers on its arms… took out the transport… I’m wondering if this a trend. They’re changing, but I hope those behemoths aren’t common.”

“I wonder why it’s doing that,” Cinder said.

Mace shrugged. “Maybe it’s natural for it to mutate. The Singe is nothing we’ve dealt with as species. It’s… unique,” he stated and shouldered his carbine.

“We’ll figure this out,” Faye said.

Mace nodded. “We will.”

“How far away is Research 43 again?” Cinder asked rhetorically.

“A couple dozen more minutes. About forty five minutes, give or take, with the frictionless transmission.”

“Not far, now.”

Faye inspected her weapon. “The turrets and defenses are still up?”

Mace nodded. “Yes. Even down here. We’re good.”

“Ugh, I want to go in with you,” Cinder whined. “But I get why I have to stay, just don’t like it,” she complained.

“You’ll be fine,” Mace said. “Trust me,” he assured her.

She smiled. “Will you be, though? I just don’t like the idea of you two going in alone…”

“Mace is fucking tough,” Faye said. “From what I’ve seen and, I mean, I’m a kitsune, so I’m tough, too, you know,” she added.

“Well… okay, maybe I just don’t like the idea of you guys getting hurt,” she said, swishing her tail.

“I know. Look, we’ll be okay. I promise,” Mace smiled.

She grinned. “Promise?”

“Promise,” Faye said, echoing Mace.

“Promise,” Mace repeated.

“Okay. Okay, alright.” Cinder sighed. “I’ll take it.”

The TRAM began to slow. They were almost there. Mace turned to them both and nodded, motioning to the door. “Alright. This is it. Faye?”

She did a check of her carbine, then nodded. “Let’s do it.”

He turned to see the approaching TRAM depot ahead, the landing platform, and the nearby airlock doors. There were a few bodies, a couple broken lights, and a few biters roaming around. Wonderful.

The TRAM came to stop.

He made his way to the door. “My six,” Mace said.

Faye nodded. “Got it.”

With that, he opened the TRAM doors. Behind him, Cinder slid into the driver’s seat that lined the TRAM controls. “I’ll wait here.”

He nodded, then stepped out of the TRAM door, his carbine aimed ahead at the biters roaming around. They finally noticed him, lifted their arms, and took several steps in his direction.

Mace capped the first one in the head. It’s skull exploded, the body spun, and it tumbled onto the Neo Martian floor. “One in the back,” Faye said. “Coming around the TRAM.”

Mace nodded. “Take it out.”

Quickly, while Faye fired at the roaming zombie, Mace dispatched the remaining biters ahead. They fell and, after Faye was done, the two approached the TRAM airlock doors. There was an eerie quiet in the bright, warm light of the hanging bulbs.

“Hold on, I have to get in,” Mace said. He tapped a few things on his chronometer and interfaced with the keypad. “Toss me that utility PDA from the TRAM.”

Faye extracted it from her hip bag and tossed it to him. He caught it, then extracted one of the cables coiled inside and drew it to the maintenance port on the keypad. “I’ll watch while you do that,” Faye said. “In case we have any biters to handle.”

“Sounds good,” Mace replied. He started the process, working to open the door and continued with the override.

Immediately, several biters stumbled forward, arms raised.

They howled and groaned in sorrowful wails, drenched in decaying tissue, mouth’s agape, faces full of pain and sad terror. “Fuck,” Faye cursed. She stepped back and worked on the first of the several—maybe four—that poured out.

Mace turned his focus to the two stammering to him. He lifted his carbine and aimed, annoyed he had to fire it so soon, and squeezed off a white-hot hybrid bullet into the first one’s face. The back of its skull exploded backward, coating the poly-alloy interior of the recently unsealed corridor walls.

The second managed to grip his shoulder, though not hard enough to do anything relevant to his health. Biters didn’t have the best strength sometimes, depending on how fresh they were. His armor, cutting edge and unyielding, sufficiently blocked the thing’s attempt at digging into his flesh, if it even was possible given its weak and spongey, blood-soaked hands.

Mace squeezed off two rounds into the rotting thing’s face. It detonated, coating the flickering emergency LEDs in the tiles above with red and black. Chunks of brain matter drizzled from the ceiling onto its collapsed, twitching body. He turned to Faye, watching as she crushed another zombie’s skull with a steadfast boot.

The other, still dazed and shambling, lifted its arms. Mace lifted his carbine and fired again. Its head, too, exploded. The biter took two more steps and toppled to the floor.

Faye glanced to Mace, then back to the corridor.

“See others?”

“No more fucking biters,” Mace managed.

“Zombies,” Faye shuddered. “Zombies piss me off, Mace.”

“Me too,” Made echoed. “Area entryway seems secure enough.”

Faye pressed the stock of her carbine into padded armor, eyes down the sights. “Your call,” Faye whispered.

Mace nodded. “Let’s go,” he replied. “I have internals of the facility’s overall layout. Structure is reminiscent of some labs,” Mace explained. “Readouts in the message told us where it was created.”

“Good.”

Mace trained his carbine into the half-dark of K-North. “Dr. Charm described her location in the video, too, so we can rely on that. Tracker internals won’t respond. System is offline,” Mace finished.

Faye continued forward by his side. “Can’t see her on the system map, right?”

Mace replied. “Right.”

Operations A, take a lift, access sublevels, grab the kitsune scientist, take lift, run. Mace turned a corner, repeating the steps in his head. After a few moments, they were at Operations A. Dead bodies peppered the area in gory piles.

“Wonder what went down.”

Mace made his way to the computer system. “Not sure. Checking some video entries, system details, and then we’re going to make our way to Dr. Charm after that.”

“Power not on?”

Mace nodded. “Emergency power. Going to reroute from the storage batteries if they’re charged, otherwise, it’s a long walk down the stairs.”

“Okay,” Faye said. “Let me know if you need anything.”

Mace typed a few things into the console at his hands, then watched as a series of battery data blinked across the display. One was full. The others were dead, or disconnected. “We got power.”

Faye swished her tail. “Thank fuck.”

He grinned. Mace used his chronometer to bypass two clearances and activate the battery. “Redirected it to K-North. 3 hours. If we’re gone, it goes offline for energy conservation. That way if we need to come back,” he paused, “which we will, if need be, there will still be power to keep things going.”

“So, can we clear out the zombies, too?”

Mace nodded. “Actually, K-North is peripherally part of Delta’s intranet. It has direct TRAM access, which means I might be able to set up some layers of defense inside. Turrets, drones, too.”

“Fucking nice,” she replied. “Why aren’t we using those now?”

“The system was never initialized for the drones,” he said. “So even if I brought one, I have to set it up first. They’re part of Delta’s systems and the turrets aren’t assembled and prepped.”

“Oh.”

“When we get back, I can finish the process. We didn’t have much time… I didn’t want to waste it. Our scientist might have useful information.”

Faye nodded. “Fair. God. Those will be useful,” she said.

“Very useful.”