by TJ Ryan
It wasn’t long before Atria finally admitted it was too cold to keep her envirosuit off. Even with the tear in the arm it kept her warmer. Tyrese tried to hide his disappointment. Tara tried to keep from glaring at him. With an impish grin, he shrugged, and kept following.
The group walked in silence. Tara repeated Atria’s words through her head, trying to make sense of what the woman has said. “Overwatch doesn’t know.” What doesn’t Overwatch know? Atria hadn’t said a word since, and Tara hoped it was just the toxic atmosphere that was messing with her head.
Although, Sergeant Enverly had spent the past twenty years working at the Academy, so it wasn’t too far of a stretch to assume she knew something that Overwatch didn’t. Even if both organizations were supposed to be linked.
The trail led them down a hill and through a valley of sorts, with sloping ground all around them. Rocks began cropping up out of the ground, just a few at first, and then more, and then they were bigger, and they formed geometric shapes. Long rectangles connected at sharp angles to squares and spires that looked like columns.
Tara had to climb over a group of them, following the path laid out by her HUD the whole time, paying more attention to her display than the world around them.
Until she realized what she was seeing.
“Hey, Tyrese, come take a look at this.”
“What is it?” he asked, dropping down on one knee next to her in spite of the soil sucking around his leg when he did.
“Here,” she told him, running her hand along the edge of one of the stones. “What do you see?”
“Um, rock,” was his immediate answer. But then, as he looked closer, he put out his hand to run it along with hers. “Wait. This is just on the surface. Like it grew here over the ages. What’s underneath?”
“Let’s find out.”
From the side of her suit’s belt, she took out a short black stick, flicked it sideways to extend the length of the digging blade, and began to chip away at the layer of stone. Tyrese did the same. It didn’t take long for them to remove a small section of the brown rocks from the object below.
“You see this?” Tyrese sounded as stunned as Tara felt. They both adjusted their recorders for better focus, making sure the length of metal they had just uncovered was in the shot. “It’s a building. Bagging Hell, Tara, we just found the side of a building.”
She looked around them again, at the hills and the rocks, and this time she thought she saw something more than just the surface of the Earth. With the controls of her heads up display, she began probing the ground with x-rays and sonar and other passive methods in order to get a view of what they were standing on.
“Not possible,” Tyrese whispered.
It was just what she had thought. These hills weren’t part of the Earth. Not really. Not originally. These hills had grown to cover up what was underneath. They were literally standing on the rooftops of a city. Or rather, the remains of a city. Most of the buildings appeared to be broken up and ruined. Either way, they were on top of Old Earth.
“Amazing,” Tyrese said after she shunted the readouts to his display. “If we could just get down a little further I think we could see inside of this one. This is incredible. How far are we from the target coordinates?”
“Far enough that I’m still worried about getting there by nightfall,” Tara answered him. “Digging this up would be an amazing discovery, I agree, but it’s going to take too long. We can always come back with another ground mission later. You know. After we get saved.”
And if Danvers doesn’t blow everything in creation up before we get the chance, she thought morosely. If she gave him what he wanted, that was the most likely outcome. If she destroyed the cells, as she had ordinally planned, then he would likely blow her up. Lose, lose.
Damnit, how could she not do what he was asking her? Especially now that they were stranded. He could refuse to pick them up from the surface at all until she had proof that she was bringing the tech back with her.
“We’ll have to leave it until later,” she said again. She put the digging tool back in its little carrier and slapped her hands free of dust and little sticky pieces of soil.
In the wind, she heard the whisper of barely audible voices again. It shifted around her feet, stirring the murky brown air into tendrils that climbed up her legs like living things.
She kicked them away, and pulled up her HUD display of their map again.
“You Defensive Engineers,” Atria griped, shaking her head and stepping up to the rocks Tara and Tyrese had cleared away. “You’re always so slow about things. Let me show you how the military gets things done.”
“You mean the Academy?” Tara sneered.
Atria rolled her eyes. “Same thing, Engineer Royce.” She lingered on the word Engineer as if it meant something bad.
“Is it?” I eyed Tyrese, who looked just about as confused as I felt.
From her belt, she pulled off one of the cylinders that Tara had noticed when they were about to exit the drop ship for the first time. Holding it out straight from her body, she smiled at both of them. “You’re going to want to get some distance between you and this.”
“Atria, no!”
Tara knew her warning was too late. As the cylinder dropped from her hand it began to spin, and when it connected with the soil it bored into the ground like a drill. Atria was already running away, in that duck’s-waddle way they’d learned to use, and then Tyrese was hauling Tara back as well, and she cringed because the planet had failed to kill them but now their own teammate was going to complete the job.
They were at the top of the closest hill when the blast hit. Tara felt the trembling groan that worked its way through the earth at their feet. She felt the blast, too, more than she heard it because she’d had the presence of mind to shut off her microphone receivers bare seconds before. Tyrese had not, and his hands flew up to his ears as he tumbled backward, the sound of the explosion far too loud in his ears. Tara stopped running and turned back for him, reaching for his ankle or something else to hold him with. Instead, he tumbled downhill away from her. The same ground that held them all in an iron grip whenever they so much as touched it now seemed to be purposefully carrying him away, back down toward where Atria’s hand grenade had gone off.
Tara skidded down the hill on her feet, stumbling every time the sludgy soil caught at her, until she reached Tyrese. He was up on his knees, pulling his hands out of the ground, shaking his head to clear it when she got to him. “I’ll kill her,” he said, in a quiet way that no one would have heard if not for the comms in their helmets. “I’ll strangle her. What was she thinking? Who in their right mind sets off an explosive—”
“It got the job done, didn’t it?” Atria sounded annoyed at them for doubting her. “She came walking back from whatever cover she had found, none the worse for wear considering it was her bomb that had detonated. “Look at your rock pile now and tell me it didn’t work.”
Smoke coiled up from the hole, mixing with the brown tendrils of gasses in the air. The rocks had been blasted away, and the meters of soil, and what was left was a blackened, cracked metal side of a building laying over at a severe angle. Hard to argue with the results, Tara supposed.
“You could have destroyed it completely,” she complained, knowing it was true but also knowing how petty it sounded now. “You can’t just go around blowing up something this old!”
“Oh? And how do you know that, Engineer Royce?” Atria tossed her shoulder and began sauntering back to the site of the explosion. “How many things that are this old have you dealt with in your career? Hmm? Do a lot of excavating on Earth, do you?”
Tara ground her teeth together. Tyrese reached up with his freed hand and held the side of her helmet. “Let it go,” he advised. “She’s not wrong, and it is the only chance we’re going to get to see this place.”
“You hope,” she said, before she could think better of it. Really, the only thing keeping them going right now w
as the certain knowledge that they would be rescued and taken off this rock. If she started chipping away at that hope with cold, hard logic, it wouldn’t be good for any of them.
So instead she followed Tyrese over to stand next to Atria and stare at the exposed metal piece that had been uncovered, at the etchings along its length, and at the fist-sized hole that had been blown apart near its middle.
“If we could widen that,” Tyrese said, thinking out loud.
“I don’t think we have time for a sight-seeing tour,” Tara reminded them.
“What else do we have except time?” Atria countered. “Come on, Engineer. You should be having an orgasm right now thinking about all the things you might find in there. Who knows? The tech you need might be right here. If we find it, then the mission’s complete and all we have to do is figure a way to get a message up to Overwatch to tell them to come and get us. I would think two Engineers like you guys wouldn’t have any problem rigging something, if we can just find you—”
The ground under their feet rumbled again, shaking so hard that Tara felt it in her teeth.
“—the right materials,” Atria finished her sentence. “Guys, what was that?”
It happened again, and this time the ground shifted underneath, sliding them closer to the metal sheet and the hole and the broken stones left over from the blast.
“We should move,” Tyrese suggested.
“He’s right.” Tara lifted a foot and took a step backward.
The ground caught her foot when she put it down again and pushed it forward. She tried again, and again, and each time the soil dragged her right back to where she was.
The ground rumbled and shook, and a terrible rending noise filled the air around them, like metal straining against its breaking point. Around them, the jutting rocks began to sink out of sight, pulling mounds of soil with them.
“Look what you did!” Tara nearly screamed at Atria, turning now and trying to run with both her hands and her feet up the hill. She’d been on level ground just a moment ago, but now it sloped down to the building they had uncovered, which in turn was twisting in on itself and sinking lower.
“I didn’t know!” Atria cried out. “I didn’t know this would happen!”
Tara shut her comms off completely as Atria continued to make excuses and the noise of the ground caving in on itself became deafening. There must be pockets of empty space all over this area, she realized. Places where building used to stand tall and proud. Now, they were an unseen trap for humans returning to their homeworld.
She could picture some sort of housing complex, made up of hundreds of separate units all inside the same four walls. If the slippery sludge that passed for dirt here started filling in just one of those empty cavities, it would seep into others, and others, until the ancient housing complex was devouring tons of soil from the surface, creating a whirlpool of sorts that would suck in anything stupid enough to be standing in its path.
Like her, Tara thought.
She fought against the lowering tide of dirt, failing to keep herself on top of it, sinking further and further down.
Somewhere in all of that, she felt the back of her suit tear along her leg. She was exposed to atmosphere.
In the next instant that spot was covered up as the ground claimed more and more of her and she sank down to the center of a spinning vortex of dirt and rock and metal pieces. She lost sight of Tyrese and Atria completely. She only had time enough to hope Tyrese was all right before the ground was up over her head and even her faceplate was buried.
As far as she was concerned about Atria… in that moment, she could die for all Tara cared.
CHAPTER TEN
When Tara woke up, it was as much a surprise to her as it was to anyone else.
Especially since, as she realized a split second after realizing she wasn’t dead, she was also very naked.
Her envirosuit was gone. Her eyes, her skin, her lungs… everything was exposed to the hostile atmosphere of the Earth. In a panic she covered her mouth and curled into a ball, eyes squeezed shut, waiting for her heart to seize or her insides to melt or any of a thousand other terrifying possibilities that she was imagining for herself.
When none of them happened, it was almost anticlimactic.
Her brain began to turn again through a fog of pain. The fall. She remembered getting pulled down the sinkhole that Atria had managed to make with her well-intentioned placement of the explosive device. Well-intentioned? Okay, maybe not.
She remembered the crushing weight of tons of soil suddenly lifting off her and then falling through blank nothingness. Then there had been… something that hit her head… or maybe she caught an edge of rock on the way down… whatever it had been, it hurt, and she’d seen stars before passing out.
And then, waking up here.
Where was here?
She had to open her eyes again to see her surroundings. If she wasn’t going to die then she needed to know what was going to happen to her next. That meant looking around. If she was alone, if she was in some air pocket under a mountain of soil, then she was as good and dead.
None of that explained where her clothes went.
When she cracked her eyes open, just a little, there were pairs of glowing eyes everywhere. In her ears, whispers floated on the wind. Loud pieces of sentences and half-formed words assaulted her mind.
Then, without warning, they stopped.
Two at a time, the luminous eyes disappeared. Tara stayed very still until all of them were gone. She couldn’t see more than three feet in front of her face and it creeped her out that she didn’t know where the bodies behind those eyes were going. For that matter, she didn’t even know what the things were. So many of them, watching her, whispering around her… and now they were just gone.
Hallucinations, that’s what the eyes were. Without the protection of her envirosuit, she was likely as crazy as Atria has become. Not only that, but her head has been hit pretty hard. Her mind was playing tricks on her, that’s all.
She sat up, her skin cold against a rough, pitted metal floor that spread out from where she was sitting in all directions. There was a wall of rock over to her right covered in a reddish growth that was dark and deep. It occurred to her that she was exactly where she had expected to be. She was inside some sort of ancient building that had partially filled with soil. She was actually under the surface of the Earth.
Rolling onto her knees, shivering against the cold floor, she crawled a few feet in a random direction. There wasn’t anything else to see. Whatever sort of room she was in, it was the same in all directions.
She was breathing. She still couldn’t believe she was breathing here. In, out. No ill effects. Atria had been right, it smelled like old garbage and it made her mouth and throat tingle on the inside. Her eyes too, a little. Levering herself to her feet, she crossed her arms over her naked breasts. She could feel tendrils of the thick air caressing her tight skin, sliding down her chest, over her belly, over her thighs. It was like the caress of a lover. It made her feel like she was being watched. Touched. Handled.
It scared her. She was more frightened now than she had been when she watched their drop ship explode across the landscape of the surface.
“Tyrese?” Her voice was swallowed up by the emptiness around her. “Tyrese, are you here?”
He didn’t answer her, and she had a moment to worry that maybe he would be the second of them to die in this forsaken place before someone else finally did answer her call.
“Oh good,” Atria said to her from the shadows not far away. “You’re awake.”
Scared as she was before, finding out that the female sergeant had been hiding right there—right there—the whole time sent ice through her veins. Abruptly she jumped up to her feet and raised her fists defensively. Although, standing there all athletically trim and bare-assed kind of took away from any threat she tried to put into her stance.
Atria stepped forward wearing a smile that would have made t
he giant hunting cats of Blithix Prime raise their hackles. As Tara’s eyes drifted downward slowly, she saw that was the only thing the rose-skinned woman was wearing. A smile, and nothing else.
Tara couldn’t help but compare what she saw to herself. It was just a woman thing, and even standing there barefoot on the soil-filled metal remains of an ancient building on a dead world, she noted how Atria was shorter than she by an inch or two, but built with curves and muscles that made her own statuesque body look like a stick in comparison. Atria’s dark, pigmented skin added a luster to her, like an aura in the grey darkness of the room.
When Tara looked back up into the other woman’s eyes, a dark red hue glowed in her pupils as well. The toxins, she realized. Atria’s body wasn’t better at handling the toxins of the planet than hers or Tyrese’s or any other human’s. Her body was soaking up radiation and gasses and Lord alone knew what else would eventually kill her.
In the meantime, those toxins were apparently driving her insane.
She came over to Tara, one step at a time, and Tara stood there immobilized by the red light in those eyes. Atria’s hand trailed up her arm, over her shoulder, and then slowly, slowly down the curve of her breast. Tara could feel her own heartbeat mixing with a tingling line of sensation wherever those fingertips touched her skin.
“You’re beautiful,” Atria said to her. “You really are.”
Tara swallowed against a dry throat, and finally tried to take a step back. Her feet wouldn’t move. Her legs flexed, the muscles tensed, but her feet were… stuck. She noticed that she had moved into a pile of the soil, off the hard metal of the floor. Her feet were sunk into the soil that had spilled across the floor when she fell in from above, and she was sinking. She was mired in it almost up to her knees, and whatever the stuff was comprised of was not letting her go.
Atria’s hands continued to move as her eyes held Tara’s in place. “So beautiful, and so bagging stupid.”
Tara blinked up at her. What was she talking about? The gasses in the atmosphere must be messing with Atria’s mind. There hadn’t been any initial effects but now her eyes were blood red and she was acting crazy and… and…