Chương 94: Book 2 - Chapter 17 - Tunnel Work

I woke up early the next day, snuck out to the garage before everyone else was awake, and pounded on Sharron's door. When she finally showed up a few minutes later she looked completely disheveled, and very unamused.

"Teddy. What the hell are you doing? Do you know what time it is?"

"Time to work, Squiddy!" I said, putting on my sweetest smile. The act only seemed to infuriate her further.

"What work? You're taking time off."

"Not from this," I replied, letting my fake smile drop, and pushing past her into her living room. She followed me, dressed in her pajamas and bunny slippers, and probably the most annoyed I'd ever seen her.

"The squirrels just reached a new area, and alerted me of a possible issue. Nyx, show her." A second later the TV burst to life, showing a sickly model four dragging something into a drainage tunnel. Sharron's attitude immediately changed, and she went into full samurai mode.

"Where was this taken?"

"In sector thirty-two, just off one of the canals," I replied. She shot me a confused look, so I clarified.

"You know those huge drainage canals? Well there's a lot of them. Ten running north-south, and ten running east-west. The areas between them are numbered, number one is in the north-east, we're in eleven." I could see her eyes glaze over slightly, so I just jumped to the point.

"They're to the south-west, not that far away."

"How did they survive the sweeps, and why haven't they been reported yet?" I shrugged, "They were outside the original cleanup area, several neighborhoods away. As for why they weren't reported? People disappear down here all the time. There would have to be a major exodus for anyone to actually investigate."

"Right, undercity things, I keep forgetting." She stood up and stretched, before heading towards the back of the RV.

"How big is that drainage area?"

"Probably around eight feet on average. Your class II suit might have trouble maneuvering, but the Class I should be fine."

"Fine. I'll get suited up, you pull your forces together," Sharron said as she disappeared into the back. I nodded towards her retreating back, then stepped outside. A samurai's work is never done. It didn't take too long to prepare, all I had to do was send out some commands and the bears pretty much organized themselves. Since I was pretty much printing out a new squad of Class II bears per day, I had troops to spare. Rather than preparing the IFVs, I just stuffed them all in the back of my truck.

It's not like I could fit those armored vehicles into the tunnels. By the time Sharron walked up, I pretty much had everything packed away, she just walked her suit into the back of the truck and stowed it away. As I pulled the truck out of the garage, I just had to double-check something.

"Nyx, what's the weather like up top?" There is a chinook happening, but the sky is clear otherwise.

"Strange time to be worried about the weather," Sharron remarked from the passenger seat.

"Not really, remember the first time you were here? A little rain topside means the sewers and canals fill up with sludge. I really don't want to be stuck in a drainage tunnel if that happens. You and the bears might be able to handle it, but I'm not sure if I would be."

"Right… the corrosive goop," she shuddered. I'd never seen anyone fall into the canals, but she had a really close look at an Antithesis dissolving last time. It's something neither of us wanted a repeat of. I parked the truck at the top of the canal, right above where the model four was last spotted. As soon as it came to a stop the two moose immediately jumped down, and started trying to rip the rusty metal bars off the entrance to the drainage tunnel.

As the rest of the bears piled out, and organized themselves, I stared down at the tunnel. The top of the grating had been ripped away, which was how the model four got in, but otherwise the area was quiet. Too quiet.

"What's on your mind?" Sharron asked, after she donned her armor. Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

"Why isn't this place crawling right now? The last incursion was weeks ago, and it should have only taken hours for a hive to start pumping out reinforcements, days at the most. Why the fuck are they only becoming active now?"

"Maybe a stealth hive? Like Cochrane?"

"Maybe," I replied, "but if that's true it seems strange to send out model fours to hunt." She shrugged, which looked odd in her super heavy suit.

"In the end it doesn't matter, we'll kill them either way." Without another word she stepped onto the side of the canal and slid down. I sighed, sent my forces down, then followed her. When I arrived at the grate I found the moose still struggling to open the way, so I sent Bob forward. The big bear took three quick swipes at the metal barrier, and the entire covering fell away. With the entrance cleared, Heavy and the moose stepped through, followed closely by Sharron and myself.

The drainage tunnel was about eight feet wide, and ten feet tall. Easy to traverse, and hard for anything to set up an ambush on us. I still swapped on my night vision, and kept my rifle ready, just in case. We managed to get about a hundred feet down the tunnel before we encountered any resistance. It just wasn't what I expected. The antithesis that intercepted us looked sickly. They had blackened skin, and moved a little slower than usual, but were as aggressive as the rest of their kin.

The wave of threes and fours smashed into the front of our lines, and stopped dead against the heavies. As the charge broke, our counter-attack began. Sharron stepped forward, lasers vaporizing whole lines of antithesis, followed by the rest of my bears, picking off whatever she missed. The attack was, frankly, weaker than I expected. The threes were slow, the fours seemed to have a shorter range than usual, and even the fives weren't firing their quills.

After the front line advanced I leaned down and poked one of the dead specimens; as soon as I did, the darkened skin burst, leaking out a foul yellow-green fluid. Interesting"No, Nyx, disgusting. What the hell is wrong with it?" I asked. As I checked the next antithesis, I could see long open sores, leaking a similar liquid. They're obviously sick, but without some sort of scanner I can't tell you why.

"Wonderful," I replied, before standing up and rushing after the front line. The further we cut into antithesis lines, the sicker they were. The last few practically fell apart before we even reached them.

"Is this a good thing, or a bad thing?" Sharron asked. Her suit was completely splattered in gore, from the last few antithesis exploding under the bears' gunfire.

"I don't know, but don't release your environmental protection until we know why. We'll scan the remnants when we get out of here, burn it off if we need to." She nodded, slightly unsure, but continued down the tunnel anyways. About a hundred meters on we found what we'd come for, a hole in the side of the tunnel with roots emerging from it. Just like the rest of the antithesis, the roots were withered, and sickly, but it was obviously a hive. Beyond the hole was a decent-sized room, burrowed out of the rock.

Most of the room was flooded, with the hive hanging precariously from the ceiling. As soon as we saw the room, Sharron just laughed.

"There's why we haven't heard of an infestation, the plants fucked themselves. I bet something managed to crawl over here, and took root, and then got stuck in here the next time the ooze flowed through. I bet those models out there were all messed up because this stupid hive's spent the entire time trying to get something that'll survive long enough to get out." I would agree, that does seem to be likely, but I still suggest getting scanned prior to cracking your environmental protection.

"Yeah, no shit," I mumbled.

"You want to take care of this, or shall I?" I asked Sharron. She only stared at the mess of roots for a moment, before turning back to me.

"The bears can do it. If I had my plasma it'd be a snap, but with my lasers I'd just be cauterizing everything. Better to just have the bears stuff melters everywhere." I nodded, and she shuffled back into the tunnel to make room.

"Nyx, box of flesh-melters please." As soon as the grenades appeared I started tossing them to the heavies, which were the only ones I was sure were fully protected against the ooze, and they started shoving them into every possible opening. I spent about twenty minutes making sure that every trace of the hive was destroyed, before coming back out to join Sharron again.

"I think we're finished up here, we should order up a scanner before… the hell?" Just as I exited the room I realized that Sharron wasn't alone. Just down the tunnel, at the nearest bend, there was a small group of people.

"They just showed up a second ago, not sure who they are, but they're lucky they ran into us instead of the antithesis," Sharron said, wthout taking her eyes off the group. As I scanned the raggedy group, my eyes were drawn to the icon pasted on the leader's lapel.

"Of fucking course," I said with a sigh, "I've been looking for you Guiding Light assholes. I don't know what you're doing here, but I've got a few questions for you."