Rescue Fantasy (20)
"Hyun-woo, is the communication still not working?"
"Yeah. I don't know if something went wrong, but now it won't even turn on."
When we were in the medical sector, even if I believed that Whiteout had tampered with things and made the communication device malfunction, it was odd that it still didn't work even after we passed through the mass of flesh.
It could have been damaged as we passed through the door, but if that was the case, other devices like the plasma cutter and sensors were still working just fine. Even the functions of the suits we were wearing remained within a normal range.
"I'm not an expert, so I can't even take it apart to check..."
Celestia let out a sigh out of frustration, unable to figure out why. No, it wasn't that there was absolutely no possible cause. There were a few things we could guess might be wrong.
First, it was possible there was a problem with the circuitry inside the communicator. If the circuits were the issue, there was nothing we could do since we were pretty much clueless about that stuff.
Second, maybe there was a communications lockdown in effect in this sector. There could have been a device installed somewhere here, similar to the communication jamming device Licorice had built. If that was the case, we wouldn't be able to communicate until it was destroyed.
At least we could use the suits for short-range communication.
'I have a lot I want to relay.'
Starting with the talking mutants, to the suspicious displacement devices made of flesh. And I wanted to ask how Nadia was doing.
A lot of time had passed since we left town, and I was really starting to worry. I could only hope nothing had happened—whether to the town or to Nadia.
"By the way, maybe it's the fog, but it's really humid, isn't it?"
Celestia commented as she watched water droplets roll off her suit. Honestly, that went way beyond just being humid from thick fog.
From the start, this kind of fog was not normal. The hydroponics bay in the mining base Heaven, built on the ice moon Titan, was supposed to be an area where the system always maintained optimal conditions.
Now, it looked as if we had lost all control over the growth of the plants.
Grass that used to barely brush our ankles now reached up to our waists, and ornamental trees that should have been small were now towering as if they had always been that way, seemingly piercing the ceiling.
Or maybe not—I couldn't be sure since the tops of the trunks disappeared beyond the mist, but it seemed like that was the case. Unnaturally lush greenery filled the area.
Even though we were in one of several sectors of the base, it felt like we had landed on an unknown planet. Everything was unfamiliar.
One thing was certain—wherever we were wandering, lost, this was the hydroponics bay. Since we'd ended up here anyway, we were moving to retrieve the communicator allegedly left behind by Captain Edward, the owner of the notebook.
Our communicator had problems, and the option of linking up with his team somewhere in Heaven didn't seem bad, and besides, we needed to move in order to get out of here anyway.
Celestia stared at her sensor as if there was nothing else to rely on in this zero-visibility situation.
'I feel like we've been walking for a while, but there's no end in sight.'
We'd been sticking to one side, hoping to hit a wall eventually, but whatever this sector's size was, there was no sign of a dead end. How much further would we have to go?
'Don't tell me we're just walking in circles?'
I'd heard about this before: when moving without proper visual cues, people can lose their sense of direction and end up circling in one place.
"Celestia, you don't think we're walking in circles, do you?"
"Don't worry. I figured we might, so I set a marker. We're heading in the right direction."
Celestia tapped the small device attached to her forearm, saying it was a standard suit function for when you're lost. I was grateful she was smarter than me; it let me focus on clearing a path.
I used the plasma cutter to slice off a tough branch blocking the way. Sticky sap dripped from the cut surface like blood.
"Carry, could you help me collect some of this? There's a sample container in the box, right?"
「৻( •̀ ᗜ •́ ৻)」
Carry turned and opened the cargo box, took out the sample container securely fastened next to Whiteout's head, and collected some of the sap dripping from the branch.
Analyzing the contents might reveal why the plants here had grown so large. I couldn't imagine a use for it, but Carrot had requested that I bring samples of anything strange I found.
After I'd successfully collected the sample, I carefully closed Carry's cargo box.
"All right, that's done."
「ദ്ദി(⩌ᴗ⩌ )」
I tapped the cargo box as if to ask Carry to keep it safe, and Carry gave me a thumbs-up. I felt reassured.
"Celestia, anything showing up on the sensor?"
"No, not yet."
Celestia instantly caught on to why I'd asked. Nothing good ever came from questions like that.
Watching her tightly furrowed brow, I brushed off the mutant's bodily fluid from my hand. As I remembered the traces I'd spotted while bending down to collect the sap, I spoke up.
"There are mutants here too. I don't know what they look like, but they're probably not very big. The footprints left on the ground are about half the size of ours."
"... Could those be clones?"
"Possibly."
There had been a lot of monsters when we broke through the medical sector. But, in a way, not as many as I'd expected. We only fought the small mutants ejected from the mass of flesh sphere.
Considering how many might have been present at the time the incident began, those were just the tip of the iceberg. I'd wondered where the rest had gone, but now had a good guess.
They'd probably traveled elsewhere through the door in the chunk of flesh in the clone cultivation chamber. Since we'd dropped into the hydroponics bay, there were bound to be monsters here too.
From their perspective, we were unwelcome guests. Celestia clenched her fist with grim determination.
"Whew... There must be a lot of them—this time, I'll really help. I won't let any of them get close."
"Then I'll try to knock them out gently, so you're less sore when you wake up."
"There aren't any mind-manipulating ones left, right...?"
Celestia made a miserable face, as if dreading that possibility.
How much more we moved, I wasn't sure, but just then, a reddish shimmer flickered through the thick mist.
At first, I thought it was the glint of a monster's eyes, so I tensed up, but soon realized it was a holographic message. Whatever direction we'd taken, we'd finally hit a wall.
We moved closer until we could read the message.
〈Hydroponics Bay—Seed Storage〉
「Welcome to Heaven. Due to plants growing to abnormal sizes, there has been a malfunction in the sector's water supply pipes. The facility's durability has been greatly compromised. Please proceed with the removal of contaminated plants.」
"Finally, something shows up. Seed Storage... Celestia, where exactly are we?"
"You know the hydroponics bay is divided into three sectors, right?"
"Yeah."
As Celestia said, the bay was divided into the North and East towers and the central hub connected to the Nexus, totaling three sectors.
Each sector was as large as the Nexus itself. They maintained air purification for the base and were also open for tourism.
Celestia continued.
"Seed Storage is part of the North Tower."
"... The North Tower?"
The North Tower of the hydroponics bay—that was quite a distance from the medical sector. I was taken aback. It was kind of a hollow, defeated feeling.
"So, we really did undergo spatial teleportation."
"There wasn't a chunk of flesh where we dropped, so it doesn't make sense otherwise. Still, judging by the situation, that's the only explanation. Not that I remember it, since I was unconscious at the time."
My body had accepted that logic had ceased to apply to the situation, but my mind still had a hard time keeping up.
"To get out of the North Tower, don't we have to pass through the central hub no matter what? Before that, what do we do about the fog?"
"Since we have a reference point, plotting a route out isn't hard, Hyun-woo. I can input our location and heading into the downloaded schematic."
Celestia shook her head, saying we didn't absolutely need to clear the mist.
"Ah, you do have to pass through the central hub. There's a gate there that leads outside, and Captain Edward's communicator should be there as well. If the facility's outer wall is breached, we could exit that way, but from the state of this place, I doubt it. Unfortunately."
Right, if the outer wall was breached, the fog couldn't linger. It would all freeze in the frigid winds.
"Let's go inside and take a look around. We need to do some maintenance anyway."
"Yep."
We probably wouldn't find anything useful in the seed storage, but a quick check was necessary. If there was a console, we could review the remaining logs to better understand what was happening, and as we drew closer, the previously silent sensor suddenly started beeping.
A sign of movement inside. Just before opening the seed storage door, I signaled Celestia to ready her smart pistol. She obeyed quietly.
I authorized entry and forced the door into 'open' mode. Vines that had covered the door all snapped at once as the opening mechanism activated.
The noise of the breaking plant matter was surprisingly loud. Some vines whipped around, spewing jets of water and twisting violently, like a loose hose.
「Kiaaaak!」
As the door began to grind open with a clatter, something inside responded to the sound. Hearing it, I could tell easily that it wasn't a person.
I waited, expecting it to come out, but strangely, it didn't. I only heard heavy thuds.
The seed storage door finally opened wide. The fog pushed in as if it had been waiting. Inside was dark. When I shone my flashlight ahead, I saw a man—more precisely, what used to be a man—mutated and tied to a pillar.
He was wearing something like a heavy armored suit, but looked as if he had been attacked on his way here and was part-way through mutation. A blue crystal had punctured his suit and was protruding outward. His jaw had split open grotesquely.
I'd wondered how a ghoul could have been tied up, but in fact, he wasn't tied—he was impaled into the pillar. From the marks left behind, it seemed the monster had pinned him there. The metal looked crushed by brute force.
Whatever the situation, ending it quickly seemed best, so I decapitated him with the plasma cutter. The ghoul's head, fangs bared, rolled across the floor.
Now, killing a ghoul didn't faze me at all. Realizing that made me feel oddly restless.
"Hyun-woo, this one's military...! Could this be the team Captain Edward talked about...?"
"We'll have to check and see."
I rummaged around to see if he had anything on him. The military suit was tough, but not worth salvaging—it had been completely shredded at the back.
'Doesn't he have a wristband?'
While searching for something useful, multiple signals appeared on the sensor. The number—about five. Thinking mutants were approaching after hearing the door open, I got up to sort things out.
My shoulder, skewered by Whiteout's tail, still hadn't fully recovered, so it was stiff, but handling ghouls wasn't difficult.
"Hyun-woo, should we close the door?"
"No, even if we close it, they'll just keep banging. It's better to deal with them."
As we prepared to fight, it quickly became obvious that the approaching sounds were not from mutants but from humans. Soon enough, people in military gear stormed in, armed and ready.
They didn't look good. Through cracked helmets, I could see their eyes were filled with exhaustion, their bodies tense with fear and nervousness. Their suits were streaked with bloodstains, dampened by the fog's humidity.
One look at the badges on their shoulders told me they were soldiers. Given their battered appearance, the mood was fairly grim.
'They're not pureblood supremacists.'
There was no acrid smell of chemicals. I felt wary encountering strangers, but there was nothing particularly off-putting.
The soldier at the front asked with a trembling voice, his rifle racking ominously.
"... Who are you people?"
Before answering, I took in the situation. The decapitated corpse impaled on a pillar was behind me, and I was holding a fragment of suit with a military base logo in my hand.
I couldn't deny the scene looked suspicious. Didn't it look like I had just killed the corpse and robbed him?
'... It's true, isn't it?'
The order of events was a little off, but I had killed the man after he became a ghoul. Judging from the similar suit design, they probably belonged to the same unit, so they would most likely see me as an enemy.
So I spoke up first.
"This is a misunderstanding. How about we talk it out like civilized people—are you by any chance Edwar—"
"Drop your weapons and get your hands up! If you don't comply, we'll open fire!"
"This really is a misunderstanding."
The muzzles were leveled at us, giving us no chance to explain. Celestia wanted to step forward, but I shook my head to signal her not to.
She quietly put down her smart pistol, following suit. For now, we'd play along. If this was the team Captain Edward talked about, I wanted to see how they'd react.
As we cooperated, a few of the soldiers, maybe trying to assert dominance, swung their rifle butts at Carry, who hesitated. The cargo box dented with a clang.
「(っ*´□`)っ」
Seeing Carry stagger, I felt my blood boil.
"Ah."
These bastards. I get that they're nervous. But this? That's crossing the line. How dare they strike Carry in front of Carry's number-one fan—me?
I immediately abandoned my original plan. We were willing to comply and maybe even cooperate if conditions were right, but they ruined that chance.
I picked up the plasma cutter I had set on the ground. I didn't turn up the power, since I wasn't planning to kill them. That was my last bit of restraint.
"Stop!"
There was the metallic sound of a bolt being racked, like a final warning, but I ignored it. I planted my foot and swung the weapon. The air whooshed as I swung, and with a clang, someone flew through the air.
"... Huh?"
A soldier beside me looked between me and where his teammate had just been. His dumbfounded face quickly turned fierce.
"You son of a—"
Kaaaang—!
He followed his comrade. The sound of bodies hitting the walls echoed twice more. People in heavy suits went flying, hitting the walls with a thud, then slumping to the floor.
The last remaining soldier was wearing a helmet, so I couldn't tell the gender, but from the figure, probably a woman.
Realizing it was over in a split second, she raised both hands in surrender, showing she had no intention to fight. A sensible decision.
I set down my makeshift club-plasma-cutter. But Celestia, who'd been quietly waiting, fired her smart pistol.
Pyut—
The shot was light, and a spark instantly crackled where it struck. I thought it'd do nothing against a military suit, but for some reason, the woman let out a strange "ugh-ghek" sound, shuddered, and collapsed like her comrades. Suddenly, it smelled vaguely sour.
When I just stared blankly at her, Celestia spoke up, almost apologetically.
"She could've attacked out of nowhere... Since it came to blows, better to make it conclusive, right? ... Right?"
At this point, it was too late for introductions like, "I am so-and-so, and this is who we are. What about you?"
Frankly, I too had been considering picking up the 'club' again.
"Of course. Well done."
With a thumbs up, I praised her. Celestia gave a small, embarrassed cough, in stark contrast to her expression when pulling the trigger.
I felt like we made a pretty good team.
-------------= Clacky's Corner -------------=
Being aggressive without knowing who your opponents are, stupid move on the military.