We're closing in on the final stretch to the bunker.
Not much has been said on the way, nor has anything of any note happened. No anklebiters, no snakes, no dangers. Besides the terrain that is, but with Featherfooted, that's hardly an issue at all. There are, however, plenty of cliffs and steep rises we've had to navigate around in this mountainous region.
Oddly enough, I find myself asking, "Anklebiters. Who named them that?"
"I did," Zenith says, head on a swivel. "It's efficient. What they target and how. You see an anklebiter and what does it do? It bites your ankles. Lungtaker, its toxin takes away your ability to breathe. That's the snake you killed."
"It makes sense, yes. Any other impeccably named critters out here?"
"Just wait until you see the armrippers or headsmashers."
"I'll pass, thanks."
"And who could forget the neckbreakers?"
A nervous chill runs down mine. Better to deal with a thousand anklebiters than anything like that. As we draw up within the last half kilometer, I sink my rifle into the snow to check its depth. The gun is a meter and a half in length, but there's nothing solid down down there.
Cipher-3 is no joke…
Trotting to catch up, I add, "Lungtaker toxin stops us from breathing, you said? But why do we need to breathe at all?"
"Cooling," he responds, helping me over a steep snowdrift. "Airflow maintains internal temperatures. Haven't any of you Neps read your documentations?"
"Much more important things to do." I let a few seconds pass then change the subject. "I didn't want to ask in front of Henna in case she doesn't know, but are you really a Pursuer?"
"I was hoping that information somehow got scrubbed." He sighs, checking his bearings. "I used to be. Not anymore."
"I don't understand."
"No point covering it up anymore, is there? The more I tell you about me, the more we might be able to figure out what's wrong with you." However he justifies it to himself, he does come clean as we press onward. "I was commissioned some fifty years ago in 2283 for battlefield assassinations during live fire combat. This was back during the war between the Federation and the Theocracy. I fought in the 918 Hecate system, where the fighting was the worst in the galaxy."
"Hm. What was your directive?"
"To search and destroy high value targets on the battlefield during firefights. Search and destroy, essentially. I was to eliminate the enemy or demolish the target and return to base for my next assignment. There were ten of us on my team in the trenches of Hecate-16. I'm the only one who survived."
"Then why are you registered as a Trooper Frame? Why did Tune think you were a Zodiac?"
"False documentation," he says simply. "A cover."
"Even after all this time?"
He hesitates to answer, gazing up at the gentle falling snow as we walk. "I'm sure there are ghosts looking for me out there–other Pursuers. Whether it's for vengeance or duty. I don't know. But I don't intend to find out. I'd rather put it all behind me."
I frown, watching the snow as well. "Can you really do that?"
"In some ways. Not all."
I can't really understand where he's coming from, but I let it go. "What happened after the war? You didn't get decommissioned?"
"I did from the military, but not as a Frame. The Federation still saw uses for me. I was allowed to live, retire from war, and work in the private sector. I'm sure you can imagine how that went."
I can't. Not really. "How'd you end up here?"
"Like I told Ace. By accident. I came to the frontiers, the fringes of the galaxy, to get away from the war and its shadows. I was on a routine delivery mission, shipping. The asteroid field did what asteroid fields do. Doesn't matter how good a pilot you are. You're always seconds from disaster in some way. Mine caught up."
"Um. Zenith? How long have you been on Cipher-3?"
He stops at a cliff face, standing in front of a huge shutter door, locked down like a vault. When I stop next to him, he answers the question with a cryptic, "Long enough to know it never lets go."
I choose to leave it at that.
Ace has yet to say anything.
Examining the huge door, I ask, "How do we get inside?"
"Have you tried knocking?"
"Very funny."
"Thank you. I haven't found a way, but I don't tend to linger in places like this for long. Let's take a look."
Sheet metal and armored plating, fasteners like a vault door set on each quadrant. I don't think they're operated separately, only that they reinforce the security. In the center of it is a dormant console, and a mechanical computer that's frozen over. The screen is cracked and useless. The keyboard breaks when I touch it, brittle from the cold.
I try to open the electrical panel. "That's bolted down."
"Use your toolkit. Left forearm."
"I don't have any tools."
"What? Every Frame has a toolkit."
"Well, I don't. Look, there's nothing in here."
ACE> Your log footage lol
ACE> You walked right past them in the pod XD
nEPI-0107> Shut up, Ace!
Zenith is staring at me and I shrug.
"Must've been a mixup at the factory."
ACE> Nice deflect lol
SYSTEM> [USER "ACE" MUTED FOR 05:00]
He sighs, getting to work. "Can't believe I have to hold your hand with everything."
"Whatever. We Neps are the most interesting thing that's happened on this rock since you landed. You just can't resist. Is that why you're following me around?"
"Now you sound like Ace. Move over."
I step aside and let him have his chance to impress me. He does. The jammed panel opens in seconds and he flips it open, revealing dead machine guts and a few other small consoles, big ugly hardware, bulky and inelegant as can be.
He straightens up, stepping back and squinting.
I press the power button, but nothing happens.
"Couldn't be easy, could it?"
"There's a keypad."
"Yes, I see the keypad, Zen. Do you know the code?"
"No."
"Then we can't use the keypad, can we? You understand how this works, right?"
"Yes…"
"This won't do it. There are too many frayed connection points. Even if we somehow manage to tap into this console, there's still no power to open the door."
"Sulfuric acid?"
"The metal could be five meters thick for all we know. There has to be another way in. Let's check the area and see if there are ventilation ducts."
ACE> Brilliant idea.
Zenith nods. "Good thinking."
"Right here," Tune says, pointing at a nearby rock. "Ventilation duct detected."
Oh. That works.
Zenith goes low and starts pushing the rock aside. I don't help. I'm just a flimsy Ethereal. Hard labor like this is beneath me. I don't think he can manage it, but then it gives. The boulder heaves and rolls down the hillside, exposing a grate in the snow. The two of us peer down into it, but I can't see a bottom to it. Too dark.
"Tune, can you run your GPR?"
"Affirmative. Ding. Ground penetrating radar shows a thirty meter vertical chute and a complex of interconnected concrete structures beneath."
I mutter, "That's a long way down."
Zenith nods. "We found our bunker."
First he hands me a cube of rope then goes to pry open the grate. I tie off a hitch on a nearby tree, then a hangman's noose on the other end, handing it over.
"Go ahead, Zen. You know what to do with this, don't you?"
ACE> Nice.
"You're a menace, aren't you?" He tosses the knot into the chute and it disappears. "Keep watch."
"I know what I'm doing."
He descends first and I go second, Taser coming with me and Tune right above. I was right. It's a long way down. At least my leg points can find purchase within the rope's threads. By the time I reach the bottom, my optics have already adjusted and automatically switched to infrared.
It's some kind of cafeteria, untouched and eerily pristine, coated in a haze of dust from decades of going undisturbed. I expected carnage, but the tables and chairs are arranged perfectly normal. Nothing is knocked over or broken or destroyed, just inert. Like everyone who lives here simply vanished.
In the dead, still air, I pick up a radio signal.
I glance at Zenith. "Thirteen gigahertz?"
He nods, chambering his rifle. "Encrypted."
Not to me. No, I have the encryption key.
It's the exact same as my own encryption key.
And the message? It's one word, over and over.
Every five seconds, a robotic voice repeats itself.
"Reclaim… Reclaim… Reclaim… Reclaim…"
As cold as it is on Cipher-3, a chill rolls down my spine.
ACE> What is it? I need access to your comms.
I grant the permissions, then start moving in the direction it's coming from.
ACE> Hm. Careful. I'm watching your sensors.
nEPI-0107> Thanks. Let's stay sharp…
Aside from the voice on the radio, mankind's crypt is as quiet as it is empty. In shades of green, my infrared visuals show everything in front of me without issue. The cafeteria area has multiple exits. I take the tunnel heading East, which is a lengthy hallway of concrete and steel. Dozens of rooms sit empty, and there isn't a single sign of life, motion, or machine.
As we go, Tune starts pointing out what look like glyphs spray-painted on the walls, doorways, and intersections. Black paint on unrelenting concrete. Some of them are obvious. A circle means empty, for example–there's nothing inside the rooms. Some of them are more cryptic. An hourglass. An eye. A handprint.
Staring at it, just an outline silhouette in negative space, black paint sprayed all around it, I wonder. Pressing my hand to it, I find that it's bigger than mine, but I can tell from the joints that it was done by another Frame. Zenith does the same thing and it's exact.
"Martial," he hums. "But this paint, it's too fresh to be fifty years old. These were all done recently. Seems like you've been here before, Nep. Most likely died here too."
This place is crushing in so many ways. I can't imagine what misery it would be to die here all by myself. Whoever she is, these are her markings. Until I find her and import her Failsafe SmartChip, I won't know what any of these symbols represent.
Or how she died.
"Reclaim… Reclaim… Reclaim…"
I look farther down the hallway. "She wants me to find her. She wants me to reclaim her memories. This way."
When we reach the next intersection, I continue straight. Taser hums along behind me and I check my handgun's ammo for what feels like the millionth time in half an hour. The pressure overhead is making me uneasy. It's like I can feel the mountain on top of us.
"Reclaim… Reclaim… Reclaim…"
After another few minutes, we find her.
"Taser, some light, please."
She clicks on her built-in flashlight so I can see through VLS instead of infrared. A misshapen mass is slumped on the floor in the middle of the hallway, white hair spilling in all directions around her head. She's facedown, severed in half at the waist, only the top half visible from where we're standing. Wires and cables and tubing trail from her torso like intestines.
I shiver. No one deserves to die like this.
It looks like she crawled out of a room to the left. A trail of dull, dark, dried out blue transmitter fluid leads from the room to where she lays. The wound that bisected her is a clean one, done with heat and plasma arcing, not a blade. A laser trap, maybe?
In front of her, drawn in dim blue blood, is an X and an arrow pointing back toward the room. Her right hand is coated with transmitter fluid, her fingers just centimeters away.
A dying message. Beware.
Lowering to my knees, I poke at her corpse and mutter, "Zenith, where did you say Ace's Failsafe Chip was?"
"On her tongue, oddly enough."
I brush this Nep's hair out of the way and lift her limp head. The corpse looks exactly like me. The corpse. Not my corpse. I have to distinguish her from me. It's an uncomfortable thought, knowing she is me.
Or… Was.
Since she's face down, her jaw hangs slack.
"Sorry," I whisper, prying it open a little more.
Feeling around the inside of her dry mouth, my mechanical fingers tug at her blue tongue and the Chip drops out, landing in my palm. As soon as it does, the thirteen gigahertz radio signal dies off and goes silent.
It's now eerily quiet in this crypt.
But I have successfully reclaimed another Nep's Failsafe SmartChip. With that, I set her back down the way I found her, and shiver again as I stand up, flicking my hands around.
Did not enjoy or appreciate doing that.
ACE> I didn't know our tongues are blue.
nEPI-0107> That's what you're focusing on here?
ACE> Are all Frames' tongues blue?
Ignoring her, I open the panel for my SmartChip ports and put this one in next to Ace's. Once the connection primes and its data comes up on my onboard, I check her files and find the total size to be a mere fraction of Ace's. Her runtime was only sixteen hours.
"nEPI-0067," I announce. "She died three months ago, in July."
Zenith only hums in response, eyeing the room she crawled out of.
ACE> I'm going to need you to grant access again…
nEPI-0107> Turing's test, you're needy.
SYSTEM> [USER "ACE" HAS BEEN GRANTED VIEW PERMISSIONS TO ALL FILES AND ONBOARD SYSTEMS]
ACE> Thanks! Now I can totally check you out ;)
ACE> Let's see what we've got here…
Not the best time to be hitting on me.
I decompress and extract the video footage, preparing myself for a story which I already know the ending to, because it's dead on the floor in front of me. Closing my eyes, I watch the reclaimed memories of another dead Nep.
Nep-67 wakes up in her pod.
Scrubbing through her wake up procedure, I get confirmation that there were indeed tools in the pod which I somehow missed. Once out of the pod, she makes her way toward the Station's signal, heading Northeast. It's late in the afternoon and she keeps glancing skyward, watching her time as she travels, wary of sundown in the harsh cold.
She eventually stops, deciding on whether she should continue or try to find shelter. In the end she picks the latter and cuts west toward the mountains. Wandering through the forest during sunset hours, right around dusk is when she stumbles across a grate. Climbing in, she slides down the angled shaft and finds herself here in the bunker.
There's several hours of her just searching around. In the mix of it is her locational data, meaning I can scrape together her movements and generate a rudimentary map of the area based on what she explored. In addition, Ace taps into her logic core logs and finds what the glyphs she left behind mean. It looks like there are some supplies scattered around that are worth taking, even though she didn't or otherwise couldn't.
There were multiple close calls with traps. Tripwires she noticed, pressure plates she almost stepped on, a few automated sensors she managed to get out of the way in time before their guns or weapons were activated. Unfortunately, no one's luck or perception can be unending or flawless. She didn't notice the sensor in this room until it was too late.
ACE> Ouch.
I don't want to watch her crawling out of the room and dying on the floor, so I close out of her data and bring myself back to the present, staring at her sorry state. "Automated laser defenses on a thermal sensor. The turret is in the right side corner nearest us."
Zenith hums, then says, "My treasure sensors are firing. There wouldn't be a trap like that if there weren't anything of value inside."
ACE> Crazy idea, Nep, but I bet that trap is there to guard something valuable!
"Agreed, but we need to be careful. There may be more than just the one. And we don't know if it was deactivated afterward."
ACE> Just send him in to test it out!
I ignore her. She's awfully flippant about death.
Maybe her integer value for reverence is in the negatives…
Zenith drops his cube case and flips it open, tinkering with a few different tools and supplies. Curious, I watch him fetch a few acid canisters and rig them with small explosive charges. Then he uncubes a disc of some kind, like Taser but thinner. Without explaining, he slides the thing across the floor inside the room.
After a few seconds, a fierce beam of blue light rotates throughout the room's interior. The sound is so sudden I flinch, and sure enough the turret carves out a chunk of the wall which splinters and falls. After a short pause a second one fires, doing the same thing.
Two traps, both active.
He hands me one of the acid explosives. "Have the honors."
I prime the charge, poke my head in, and flick my wrist. With my back to the wall I wait to hear the pop, then enjoy the sound of sizzling. After a few seconds I say, "Tune, can you check if that worked?"
"Yes, Nep." She pokes her head inside too and looks around. "Affirmative. Turret destroyed. Would you like me to attempt disabling the second turret?"
Zen and I shrug at each other and I say, "Sure. Let's see what you can do. Be careful though."
Zenith adds, "Don't get yourself killed, MI."
"Error: personnel not authorized to give commands. Disregarded. Nep, my shell is frozen mercury–I will not activate any heat sensitive dangers. Proceeding."
ACE> LOL DISREGARDED
Tune's eyes blink red and she runs in. I'm half expecting her to delicately finesse the machinery or damage the targeting telemetry but, no, she just smashes the thing with her fists. Once it's a sparking wreck of unrecognizable scrap, she turns around and her eyes return to blue.
"Turret disabled," she cheerfully states. "This room has been cleared of traps."
"Disabled," Zen scoffs.
"Thank you, Tune." I trade a glance with him but neither of us move. "After you, Pursuer."
"You Neps come back if you die."
"Ace was right, you are the worst."
ACE> ASSHOLE!!!
I stand up and test my luck, stepping inside.
A gunshot blasts my audio inputs and I scream.