Chương 274

The tracks led them along the edge of a slow-moving river, thick with gray sludge. Airborne particulates clung to the water, turning it into a slurry that stank of sulfur and dead fish. Ahead, built directly into the rocky embankment, sat a squat structure of poured concrete and iron piping. Plumes of acrid yellow smoke rose from vents along its flat roof, blending into the ambient fog. Garrick raised a hand, signaling the team to fall back behind a cluster of boulders.

"I've read reports about places like these. It is an operating station as much as a production center," the Adventurer murmured, tracking a pair of Walkers patrolling the perimeter.

"Small in capacity, but well guarded. It should serve our purposes perfectly."

"We are here to destroy it, not study it," Erethemor muttered, his claws scraping a deep gouge in the stone. He looked almost sullen at the thought of not going for a direct assault, but given that this would be their first true fight against the enemy, since the ambush had been far too short and successful to count, Orion thought everyone else could agree.

"We are here to see if we can fight together without killing each other," Garrick countered, his voice hard.

"I have fought alongside every faction in Cyril, and I know all too well how easily allies can become an encumbrance when powers bleed into one another. Paladins draw on the Light hot and fast and can often exhaust themselves within the Silence. Vampires excel at rapid, silent bursts but need to build up blood reserves to fight for long. Druids need nature mana to cast, which means Daus will be limited to his internal strengthening as we get closer to that building.

Does that sound like the kind of situation we should walk into unprepared?" Daus flinched but offered a stiff nod. He'd been drawing power from the Field since they left the broken patrol behind, and while he could probably cast a couple of spells, once that was done, he'd be limited to reinforcing his armor. Not that it isn't anything. That thing grants him five hundred points in Body, almost enough to make him an equal to a martial class. But he will be limited. Garrick then looked at Verner and Orion.

"I don't imagine I need to tell you two that it will be difficult to draw significant amounts of mana from the Weave in the fog. Be careful and pace yourselves, lest you become dead weights." Verner gave a slow nod.

"We have ways around that, but it is not an unfair assessment." Orion just grunted. His personal brand of casting gave him far more leeway than others, but he was still the weakest of the bunch, so that wouldn't mean much. Satisfied, Garrick spent a few moments watching the base before finally speaking.

"Daus, I want you to stay back and watch our backs as we go in. Another patrol might return while we're inside, and it will be your duty to eliminate them before they can pin us," he ordered.

"Erethemor, you will be our main bruiser, but try to keep the fire in check. We need the structure intact to search it. Esmeralda, take point and move as you need; I know better than to limit a vampire on a hunt. Jordan, protect the center and guard the casters. Let's move." They slipped through the rocks, moving in silence.

Esmeralda glided ahead, melting into the shadows cast by the rocky overhang, and easily bypassed the Walkers, masking their line of sight with her trail as she slipped straight to the steel door set. The rest followed quickly, taking advantage of the cover she'd left to join her. The first problem was that the door had no handle or visible keyhole. Instead, a web of thin glass tubes ran across the metal, filled with a violently bubbling green liquid.

"These are wards of a sort," Orion whispered, pushing his glasses up his nose as the Arcane Overlay fed him the composition.

"I suspect we'd need to either feed the right counteragent through that tube or have some kind of passpartout."

"There was nothing of the sort among the machines we fought," Verner muttered back, before lowering his voice.

"Not that we managed to get a good enough look before they were destroyed by fire." Orion suppressed a snort. He doubted Erethemor hadn't heard, given his draconic senses, but he seemed to think responding was beneath his dignity.

"Then we'll have to force the issue. If we could lower the temperature of the locking mechanism inside the steel, the metal would contract," he suggested.

"The internal tumblers should shrink enough to release the latch without disturbing the exterior glass." The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

"If you can handle the heat extraction," Verner said eagerly, clearly following along.

"I will take care of dampening any signal the opening might send out." The others were getting antsy about being out in the open, even though it would be a few more minutes before the Walkers returned from their circuit, so they set to work. Orion placed a hand inches from the steel, isolating the thermal vectors within the lock. He carefully drew the heat outward, dispersing it into the damp river air, and frost bloomed across the door's center.

Beside him, Verner traced a complex, glowing blue sigil in the air, creating a vacuum that wrapped around the entrance and sealed all forms of energy within. It wouldn't work against anything more powerful than a Tier One spell, but it was unique and interesting enough that Orion decided to ask about it later, once the operation was over. Verner seemed like a smart and reasonable young man, so he was hopeful he could trade some knowledge of light magic for it.

A snap echoed inside the vacuum, unable to reach their ears, and the door swung inward by a fraction of an inch. At the same time, an invisible pulse rippled out, only to fail to pass through the bubble once more. Orion exchanged a look with the other mage, feeling a genuine spark of appreciation. It's so nice to work with competent people. Not that the witches of the Sanctum are incompetent, no, but their methods…

They slipped inside, and Garrick pulled the door shut behind them, allowing them to release their magic and restore the door to its pristine state. Daus would need time to handle the Walkers on his own, and the fewer alarms they raised, the better. Within the facility, the Field was even more muted, and although visibility improved, Orion could feel his CC throw a string of minor errors as it lost connection to the ambient world, forcing him to manually reroute his processing power until it reconnected.

Footsteps echoed down the sterile, fluorescent-lit corridor. Esmeralda moved so quickly and smoothly that Orion was barely aware of it, intercepting the approaching guard before he could even notice their presence. Surprisingly, their first victim wasn't a machine. It was human, but brass plating was bolted directly to his limbs, and alchemical tanks were fused to his spine, pumping fluid directly into his neck. Esmeralda slammed him against the concrete wall, her hand clamped over his mouth.

Though she looked like she wanted to, she didn't tear his throat out. Her crimson eyes flared, and she bit her own wrist, pressing her bleeding flesh against his lips. The guard convulsed, his eyes rolling back as the Vampire Baroness's blood forced its way into his body.

"Fascinating," she whispered, holding the twitching man in place.

"They filter their own blood through these spinal tanks to stave off the Silence's corrosive effects on organic tissue. What a crude, painful existence." She leaned closer, her voice taking on a hypnotic cadence.

"Speak quietly, little man. What are you guarding?" The augmented soldier gasped, fighting the compulsion for a fraction of a second before his will shattered under her command.

"We are gathering subjects. Testing the... the substance." Clearly, the filtration system was doing something to counteract her magic, since Orion doubted that a random guard had the sheer willpower to overcome Esmeralda's control.

"How many outposts are in this region?" she asked as she fed him more blood.

"Three," he choked out.

"We manage the supply lines... feeding the staging ground... twenty miles north." Esmeralda smiled warmly, then twisted her wrist, snapping his neck with a sharp jerk. She lowered the body to the floor.

"I do believe we have our pick of the next targets. We can either go through all of these facilities or aim directly for the main one."

"We'll make that decision once we know more about what to expect," Garrick muttered as he gestured for Erethemor to take care of the corpse, who burned it to a crisp, leaving naught but ash in its place. Once that was done, they moved deeper into the facility. It hadn't escaped Orion that, given the guard's words, they might be saddled with more than just a choice. It depends on the kind of subjects they are working on and their condition.

Ironically, it'd be best for us if they were in too bad a condition to care for. It was a cold way to think, but they truly couldn't afford to fall behind now. The corridor opened into a wide, circular chamber lined with grated walkways and humming iron pipes. At the center of the room stood six large glass cylinders, each filled with a murky, yellow-tinted fluid. Orion stepped up to the nearest vat, wiping away a layer of condensation from the thick glass, though he already knew what he'd find.

A man floated inside. His skin was mottled with patches of gray bark, and his hair resembled dead, withered vines. A druid. Brass needles pierced his chest and skull, pumping a substance directly into his circulatory system. The man's chest rose and fell in a labored rhythm. He was still alive, though clearly in great pain. He moved to the next vat and found another druid, this one a woman, whose limbs were partially dissolved by the alchemical bath. Verner hissed beside him.

"This is beyond depraved."

"It is, but I suspect we'll find more of the same. They seem to be measuring how long it takes the Silence to consume a living connection to the Field," Orion replied, reading the dials and pressure gauges bolted to the cylinder's base.

"The druids are very attuned to life mana, so it's no surprise their bodies are more resilient than most, even if their physical stats aren't particularly high." It was fortunate they'd left Daus outside, or the man might have lost it. From the corner of his eye, Orion saw Jordan glare at the vats, his gauntlets clenching into fists. His jaw tightened, and a dangerous light flickered in his eyes.

Though nobody on the team was a stranger to death, even if some were more than others, nobody liked seeing such impersonal, industrialized slaughter and torture. Orion was about to speak when his glasses flared. A red warning prompt blinked across his Arcane Overlay. He frowned and looked away from the vats, investigating the anomaly. It wasn't a magical fluctuation, which is why he hadn't noticed it earlier.

No, it was a physical issue: an electrical current was traveling through the copper wiring attached to the ceiling. He traced the wire back down the corridor, all the way to the spot where Esmeralda had killed the guard. A dead-man's switch. Linked to the soldier's heartbeat, it triggered the moment the biological rhythm stopped. A more thorough look at the walls revealed that, interspersed among the tubes carrying Silence around the facility, were various sensors, one of which had detected the sudden absence.

"Garrick," Orion said, his voice cutting through the gloom.

"We've been found. A silent signal just went out across the entire base." No more than a few seconds later, an actual alarm blared through the entire facility, loud enough to be heard for miles, and steel bulkheads slammed down at both ends of the chamber, locking into place.