Chapter 2: Action and Reaction

As they proceeded deeper into the city, the flooding finally gave way to dry ground, the team breathing sighs of relief now that they didn’t have to trudge through knee-high water. There were fewer listing buildings here, their foundations not subjected to the same kind of erosion, the edifices slowly growing larger as they neared the center.

That wasn’t to say that the buildings were intact. This area had been hit hard, evidence of plasma burns and uncontrolled fires visible everywhere Xipa looked. Where buildings had collapsed, it was because they had been destroyed, many of the streets blocked by rubble and debris. Once again, it complicated navigation, turning what should have been a simple grid of straight roads into a maze. Bluejay couldn’t scout too far ahead without potentially exposing himself to danger, so they played a kind of guessing game, moving from street to street until they encountered an impassable obstacle. It was adding kilometers to their journey.

As they rounded a corner, emerging onto a new street, they came across a downed skimmer. The single-rotor craft had black plasma burns on its white hull, the purple medical markings now almost completely covered over by red mosses and weeds. It had been shot out of the sky, cutting a groove in the building behind it. Xipa’s eye followed the channel that it had carved out of the carbcrete, spilling rubble onto the street below before it had cratered into the asphalt, digging a long trench. Its canopy was open, and there was no pilot inside – only a cluster of mushrooms that now sprouted from the padded seat. She knew better than to assume that they had escaped...

“What was this?” Fletcher asked, walking a little closer to examine it. “Looks like a helicopter. Thing’s about the size of a shuttle, though.”

“It’s a skimmer,” Xipa explained. “It’s what we used for fast response. Guard, medics, fire patrols – things like that. Those are EMT markings on the side.”

“Why would they shoot down a medical craft?” Ruza asked, leaning into the cockpit curiously. “What threat could it have posed?”

“I remember that day like it was yesterday,” Xipa replied, the team moving past the downed aircraft. “Valbara’nay have little choice but to remember. When the hive ships appeared in the sky, they attacked everything that moved, everything that put out an energy signature. Ironically, for all their technology, they behave very much like insects. They are mindlessly aggressive, and they have no concept of combatants and non-combatants. If it moves, it is food. Sometimes, I envy your ability to forget...”

“Even we don’t forget things like that,” Fletcher muttered. “It stays with you. All of it...”

As they moved deeper into the city, they came upon an entire block that seemed to have been transformed into a forest. It began with weeds that were breaking through the asphalt, their slow growth creating cracks in the road where they sprouted. They gave way to shrubs, even mature trees, some of them large enough to tower four or five storeys into the air. They must be growing in the fertile soil between the underground sewers and the road, their roots reaching down into the flooded depths, fed by the rivers. It was strange to see architecture that had once seemed immovable so easily conquered, the steady growth of the plants warping and breaking asphalt and carbcrete in the same way that the gradual flow of a river could cut a channel through solid rock. Exposed roots tore through the road like it was paper, exposing more of the underlying soil, which allowed smaller plants to take root in the process. Mushrooms and carpets of red grass abounded, covering over the street, the abundance of vines that trailed between both sides of the road joining with the trees to create an overhanging canopy.

“How the hell did this happen?” Fletcher wondered as they walked into the shade of the red leaves.

“We had small parks and nature installations throughout the city,” Xipa explained. “They’ve likely overgrown their bounds over the decades.”

“Overgrown is an understatement,” he muttered, glancing up at the branches as they waved gently in the breeze.

There was a sudden rustle of leaves ahead of them, the team stopping dead in their tracks, raising their weapons. Something burst out of the bushes, racing from one side of the street to another, vanishing into an alley. Xipa got a scant glimpse of it, little more than a four-legged blur.

“What the fuck was that?” Fletcher demanded, lowering his rifle again.

“A native animal, I think,” Xipa explained.

The Earth’nay raised a finger to his helmet, Xipa watching him curiously.

“Looks like some kind of fucked up deer or antelope,” he said, apparently having scrubbed back through his helmet cam footage. “How did they get inside the walls? We had a hard enough time ourselves.”

Ruza walked up beside him, placing a furry hand on the barrel of his XMR.

“Remember what I told you,” he warned. “Must I confiscate it?”

“Alright, alright,” Fletcher grumbled as he let the rifle hang from its sling. “Doctor’s orders.”

They continued on, Xipa taking in the strange scenery as she rode atop Gustave’s shoulders. This part of the city must have taken the brunt of the invasion. There was battle damage everywhere, barely covered over by the thriving plant life. There was scarcely a building that didn’t have holes in it, weapon fire painting trails on their facades. Melted craters of asphalt where plasma cannons had impacted had filled in with rainwater to create stagnant ponds, their algae-covered surfaces disturbed by small amphibians that slunk beneath the water as the team passed by.

“How far off are we from the signal?” Fletcher asked.

“We have to make it to the city center,” Xipa replied. “You see those towers in the distance? That’s where we’re going.”

Through the sparse canopy, they could see the spires rising up ahead of them, far taller than the structures in this band of the city. No two were alike, the Valbara’nay architects having flexed their creative muscles in a competition to create the most extravagant skyscraper. One of them twisted into the clouds like a corkscrew, glass windows spiraling around it as they followed its sculpted contours, its roof culminating in a needle-like lightning rod. Another had great, oval-shaped holes in its superstructure, rising into the sky like a strand of DNA. Inside each of the openings was a helical wind turbine, one of them still spinning, while the rest had seized up without maintenance. Battle damage and weathering had impacted them, rusting metal and staining carbcrete, but they were high enough that they had escaped the ravages of the nature that flourished far below.

“When we call for pickup, every Bug in the region is going to hear it,” Fletcher warned. “We know they use radio, and they’ll come running. That’s if they haven’t already sent teams to investigate the distress signal. We need an open area, like a parking lot, with easily defensible positions nearby where we can create a secure LZ.”

“We haven’t completed our mission yet, and already you plan our escape,” Xipa chided. “We need to search for survivors.”

“What, do you want us to check every closet and sewer grate in the city?” he scoffed. “We’re not hanging around here for any longer than we have to. If we determine that the beacon has been active since the invasion, we’re out of here.”

Xipa held her tongue, but a confrontation was brewing, and it couldn’t be postponed for much longer. Fletcher had never believed in her mission, and she wasn’t about to cut it short after they had almost died on more than one occasion trying to get here. Even if it turned out that the beacon had been active all this time, she would still push for a cursory search of the area.

“Hang on,” Bluejay said, raising a closed fist in a gesture for them to stop.

“What’s wrong?” Fletcher hissed. “You smell something?”

“No,” Bluejay replied, pointing into the trees ahead of them. Xipa saw it too now, her heart dropping into her stomach. Draped over the branches was a thick web of silvery netting, its fine strands hanging down towards the ground like a curtain, as though designed to ensnare anyone unwary enough to walk through it. “More webbing.”

“Suddenly, giant spiders sound a whole lot more appealing,” Fletcher muttered. “It’s another one of those sniper Bugs – they’re inside the city. We have to pick up the pace.”

“Turn left here,” Xipa advised, pointing to an overgrown alley. “We should avoid using the main streets where they could fire on us from the windows. We can move through the buildings if we have to.”

“Keep your eyes peeled,” Fletcher grumbled, his prosthetic hand twitching near his holster. Xipa could tell how badly he wanted to draw his handgun. He had told her that he had turned himself into a weapon – that his only purpose was war. How must it feel for a weapon to be rendered defective?

They trudged through the dense undergrowth, the foliage that filled the alleyway making it nigh impassable. Eventually, Gustave had to take point, using his weight to smash through the obstacles. Wood splintered as he shouldered through branches and shrubs, tearing vines loose, Xipa closing her helmet to protect herself from debris.

When they emerged on the other side, it wasn’t much different from the area they had just left, the spreading forest reclaiming the streets. Bluejay led them on, as they couldn’t see more than about ten meters in any direction, trudging through the undergrowth as he used his antennae to navigate. As they passed a windowless building, he paused, his antennae waving in the air as he turned his head towards the naked door frame.

“What have you got?” Fletcher asked.

“Something ... weird,” he muttered, shouldering his rifle as he made his way inside. Everyone save for Gustave followed him in, the Krell’nay standing guard outside, Xipa hopping off his shoulder as she trailed behind the team.

This place must have once been a restaurant. Chairs and tables were strewn about the room, a counter towards the back wall now covered with mushrooms, the carpet in a similar state of decay. There was a huge fish tank occupying one wall, the glass now completely covered over in a layer of gunk, whatever had once lived in it long dead. Xipa noted that some of the round tables had been upturned, and there were black marks on them that had melted through the metal, as though someone had been firing plasma at them.

“A squad of guards must have mounted a last stand here,” Xipa sighed, crouching to examine a burn mark on the carpet.

“No,” Bluejay said, shaking his head. “I smell ... ichor.”

“We took out our share of Bugs that day,” Xipa replied, indignant.

“No, that’s not what I mean,” he explained as he knelt to brush his antennae against the side of the counter. “This is recent, more recent than the invasion. I’d say ... weeks old, not decades.”

“Tell us what you sense,” Ruza insisted, watching as Bluejay began to crawl along the carpet on six limbs like an insect. He brushed his feathery antennae across the floor, picking out every chemical trace as he moved back over to the entrance.

“There was a squad of Drones here,” he began, pausing to scent the air. “Six of them, I think. They were hunting.”

“You can tell that from pheromone traces?” Fletcher asked skeptically.

“Pheromones convey emotions,” he replied. “I can get a sense of what they were feeling at the time, what they were signaling to each other, but it’s vague. They pursued something into this building,” he continued, slowly walking over to the center of the room. “I sense their anticipation, like they had something cornered. But nearer the middle of the room, there’s...”

“What?” Xipa asked.

“It smells like chaos,” he replied. “The pheromones are all scrambled, like ... I don’t know how to describe it in your terms. Imagine a hundred people screaming in a tiny room, all shouting something different. There’s so much confusion, borderline nonsense. I can’t make any sense of it.”